As part of the agreement between a host country school and the Peace Corps, a municipality must provide adequate housing for its Volunteer. Being that this is the Peace Corps those requirements are for the bare essentials only; a safe and secure location away from locals bars, within a reasonable travel distance to the school, and the apartment is to have certain furniture provided i.e. desk and bed. Understandably, other amenities that we have come accustomed to in the U.S. are not required; i.e. oven, TV and Internet. Most Volunteer homes are located in a bloc (apartment building) and are quite modest in size, usually consisting of one room, plus a bathroom and a kitchen. Additionally, some Volunteers are required to live with a Gazda (host family) for the duration of their service; basically sharing all common rooms but with their own private bedroom. Since every Volunteers situation is different, not only with housing but also with Counterparts, general location, school environment etc, we are encouraged not to compare. Inevitably, being the social creatures that we are, we do compare. After a recent visit to my site by several Volunteers, I was encouraged to write about my home and a few of the idiosyncrasies it has to offer.
So let’s start off with a quick disclaimer to make sure this blog post is not misconstrued in anyway. I absolutely love the home I have been provided, my school and my site in general and there is little if anything I would change about it. Having said that, nothing is perfect and rather than go crazy we are encouraged to have an open and accepting attitude and personally, I just prefer to laugh about those less than perfect things anyway. In this post we will cover a lot of the things that I love along with some of the challenges, but I am in no way complaining, trust me, I have it really good here, really good.
The house in which I live was built in 1936 with the purpose of housing some of the school’s staff. I don’t know exactly who has lived here in the past but I would imagine grounds keepers and the like. The building is essentially a duplex; it consists of one building split down the middle creating a mirror image. Ironically, after moving to the suburbs of Maryland in the 5th grade, I lived in a very similar duplex with my mother through much of college. This is a one-story building, longer than it is deep, with a front and backdoor for each residence. The front door leads through a small foyer (I guess that is what you call it), which is big enough to keep my bicycle, a row of my shoes and the occasional stray dog that wants to curl up on my welcome mat. Once through the foyer, we enter the living room, which doubles as an office with a large desk and is where I typically compose blog posts such as this one. The living room is rather large and displays the high ceilings that are represented throughout the house. In addition to the desk, I was provided with two armchairs and a couch, all of which double as pull out beds; yes, even the armchairs pull out straight for flat, though narrow, sleeping. The school also kindly provided a large television, though I have yet to hook it up. There is one large and old window with white, shear, floral patterned drapes, which looks out onto the main gated entrance for the school; no one can get on or off campus without passing through this gate. Finally, the first of three sobas (large ceramic, gas and wood heater) stands ornamentally in the living room corner.
Once through the living room, we enter a short hallway. Immediately to the right is the entrance to my bedroom, second door on the right is my bathroom, the only door on the left is the kitchen and the door straight ahead is the backdoor. The bedroom is also rather large by Peace Corps standards with plenty of room for a queen size bed, two night stands, another, smaller desk, and a second soba. There is another large, though slightly smaller than the living room, window with the same shear drapes. Past the soba to the left is another smaller room, which could perhaps have been an office or a children’s bedroom. At the moment this is where my school-supplied wardrobe is and where I hang my clothes to dry after cleaning. There is another window, same size as the bedroom’s, that I can open to help the drying process along; though it is important to note that window screens are not widely used here and thus not so friendly flying creatures may come and go as they please and stick around to torment me at night. Back out into the main hallway and around to the blue tiled bathroom, I have been supplied with the essentials: toilet, sink and a stand-up shower, no tub (more on all this later).
The white tiled kitchen is probably my favorite room of the house. It’s window overlooks a back garden that the students are tasked with maintaining as part of their education, though it is in disrepair at the moment and full of little more than various varietals of weeds. The sun sets over the back garden and fills the kitchen and laundry room daily with late afternoon sunshine. This is a blessing and a curse, though pretty, the sunlight adds additional heat to the already running stove and burners causing for sauna like conditions. Fortunately, though old, I do have a stove and oven combination, fully adjustable and powered by gas, halleluiah! To the right is a short, but more than adequate refrigerator that, thankfully, doubles as storage space on top. Continuing around is my third soba, which can also apparently be used as a cook top as it features several adjustable rings above a wood and gas powered furnace. Next is my washing machine (not supplied by the school), though not actually hooked up yet, it is providing some additional counter space and thus not a total waste. In front of the window is a small work bench which represents my three square feet of official counter space and kitchen work area; a far cry from the kitchen space I had in Richmond, no parties for twenty-five guests here, but adequate. A small, but new sink/drying rack combo was installed shortly before I arrived and work fine. Finally, above the sink is my electric hot water boiler, bolted to the wall and large enough for one quick, hot shower or a huge load of dirty dishes.
A fresh coat of white paint was applied shortly before I arrived, inside the house and just outside the front door. The living room and bedroom floors are old wood, covered with unfitted carpet that crawls several inches up the walls. The hallway floor has a thin sheet of laminate flooring haphazardly rolled out to partially cover the original cement. The bathroom and kitchen both feature tile floors, each with one tile replaced by a water drainage cover. Thankfully, there is electricity, which seems reasonably reliable thus far with only one outage since I arrived. Academic florescent lighting hangings from the living room and bedroom ceilings, and provides for overwhelmingly bright, tanning like lighting conditions at night. All of the internal doors are old and still use skeleton keys for locking, all of which I amazingly have. The external doors have more modern, and safer, locks. The windows are barred, but tastefully so, as the bars have been painted white to match the trim of the windows and are hardly noticeable.
Being that the house was built with school staff in mind, it is conveniently placed on the school campus. This certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps most obviously, due to the close proximity to school, my commute takes all of two minutes; this will come in particularly handy this winter when the snow arrives. Additionally, being that the school is my landlord, I have not one handyman but a whole staff. This has proven quite useful, though with the impending start of school, they have become less responsive to my requests for repairs. One fun story entails the delivery of my bed, which arrived while I was away at the conference in Sinaia. Since the Administrator, who is the only other person that has a key to my house, was already gone for the day, the bed was stored for the week in the lobby of one of the school buildings. Upon my return, the staff promptly notified me of the delivery and arranged to have the bed brought across the school grounds to my house. Early Tuesday morning, there was the gruff, though somewhat endearing, loud knock on the door from whom I have come to know as the “Electrician;” a burly, stout older gentleman with a beer keg belly and killer, grey mustache, who always gives me a hard time for not wearing my papuci (slippers) in the house. He came ahead of the delivery to move some furniture around to make room for the bed. Moments later a horse drawn caruța clopped up the school’s driveway with what appeared to be the pieces of my bed in the back. Unfortunately for this story the caruța kept right on going but as a consolation, a tractor, complete with front loader, loudly crawled up to my front door to deliver my bed frame and mattress, as if they were topsoil for the garden. The Electrician and a couple other men from the school quickly unloaded everything and, to my surprise, busily got to work with assembly.
In addition to the handymen staff of the school are the cleaning ladies. Sorry for the lack of equality, when it comes to the maintenance staff, that’s just the way it is here. Men fix and build stuff and women clean stuff. Though it is worth mentioning that the boss of all the handymen and cleaning women is a strong willed woman herself, known as the “Administrator.” Which, after having written it this way, sounds more like the title for an action-packed Jason Statham movie; and with a little additional thought, is totally within the realm of possibility. I can easily picture the Administrator, mundanely conducting routine business by day and dawning a machine gun by night in the jungles of Columbia, single handedly fighting drug smugglers with explosions going off in the background. Maybe I have just blown her cover. Anyway, the point is, that with a few simple, well placed words, such as “Thank you for all of your help this week, I hope you have a great weekend, oh and by the way I have some visitors coming to town today, should be fun” a contingent shows up with cleaning supplies and a vacuum cleaner ready to ensure my place is spotless for any impending company. All in all the staff here is incredible.
The downside I suppose of being located at the front gate is that there is a lot of traffic; people on foot, bicycles, by car, tractor and yes, by caruța go by regularly and I suspect this will only increase as school actually gets started. Oh, and did I mention that the pack of schoolhouse dogs bark at them all, especially the bicyclists? Though it’s not all bad, most of it is kinda fun. The first time I heard a caruța coming by I had no idea what the heck was happening. The loud, fast clopping of horse hoofs on cement immediately outside your window is indescribable, something between an earthquake and thunder. Now I hardly notice the common occurrence; though one early morning I woke up to the sound, slightly dulled. The same rhythm, but without the harsh concrete amplifying the hoof steps. As I rolled over in bed towards the window, I realized the horse was coming through the side gate and directly past my bedroom towards the back garden. I half expected him to pop his head in and say “Hello Wilber.” Between events such as this one, and the mentally disabled roaster down the street that thinks the sun rises every thirty minutes, it’s a wonder I get any sleep at all.
Another interesting story and somewhat of an unfolding mystery started with the appearance of an old bicycle, chained and leaning against the sidewall of my house one day. As the past week continued, I noticed the bike was returning everyday and that it belonged to an old man with one of those flat “old man hats” (no idea what they are really called, but think Scottish). He always parks his bike against my house and thus bypasses the main gate, opting to walk directly past my front window and onto campus. The dogs are particularly fond of harassing this gentleman. Yesterday, like clockwork, he came by in the afternoon, this time armed with food to quell the dog’s barking. I still have yet to figure out what it is that he is doing here, but I suspect he is harvesting fruits from our orchards.
This brings us to the laundry list of quirky things that I am working on getting fixed; enter the Screaming Banshee. As I mentioned some of the fixtures in my house were newly installed shortly before I arrived; among them were all of the conveniences in the bathroom: sink, shower and toilet; all of which I am certainly grateful to have. As you could imagine, shortly after flushing the toilet, the wall mounted water tank quickly begins to refill. As the floating ball on the inside of the tank rises, naturally the water intake slows and eventually stops. It is in-between the slowing and stopping that my toilet tank suddenly becomes possessed by the lungs of a violent and long dead banshee, screaming for what seems likes hours (though is probably only 10 seconds) a slow, painful and ear piercing song. Surely all of the dogs in Valea Călugărească either keel over in agony or howl uncontrollably at the sky whenever they hear it. The best is when unsuspecting houseguests trigger the event at six in the morning.
Let’s stay with the bathroom for a moment. In addition to the annoyance of my toilet are a couple of challenges related to my shower and sink. Since I moved in, the brand new, molded plastic, shower floor insert (complete with pink and red heart patterned shower curtain) hasn’t drained properly. Simply having been installed on the bias causes the water to pool on the far side away from the drain. The immediate solution to which is to repeatedly push the water to the other side with my hand until the job is done. The long-term solution, which has yet to be implemented, is for the insert to be properly reinstalled. Lucky for me there has more recently been fuel added to the fire. My sink is designed to drain through a series of pipes that migrate over to and under the shower floor insert. At some point along the way that piping has become dislodged and now drains out under the shower, onto the floor and eventually to the drain beneath my feet in the center of the bathroom floor. This is particularly fun when brushing my teeth, morning, noon or night, or when shaving, let alone when washing my hands throughout the day. Imagine my surprise the first time this happened and my socks were unexpectedly and quickly soaked.
Unfortunately, leaks are not limited to the bathroom. As recently as last night I could hear the constant drip of water coming from the outside roof to the ceiling of my living room, due to the rain we received. A couple of months ago I noticed the collection of water beneath this spot on the floor, reported it and was told that it had been addressed; based on last night’s observations they may need to make another pass. One day in the kitchen while washing dishes I realized that the floor was wet. Knowing that I hadn’t been particularly sloppy when washing dishes, I checked the cabinet under the sink. Upon opening the door, I received a face full of spraying water. After turning the water line off I noticed that the intake hose joint had a small crack. Hoping that MacGyver tape would do the trick I wrapped it up as tight as I could. Unfortunately a drip persisted for a couple of days; fortunately it has since on its own stopped. Not sure why, and I’m not asking any questions, just don’t tell anyone. This reminds me of another leak under the same sink from the water drainage pipe; this one emanating from poor, hasty installation, that I was able to fix with a little elbow grease.
This brings us to a story I alluded to a couple of weeks ago; the explosion of my hot water boiler. Whenever leaving site for an extended period of time, I turn the boiler off so as not to unnecessarily use up electricity. Upon returning though I naturally turn it back on so that at some point in the future I can enjoy a hot shower or wash my dishes. After being home for a couple of days, I noticed a subtle but unnerving pop coming from the kitchen and more specifically the boiler. Never having had one of these things before I figured the sound was just part of the boilers normal operation, kicking on and off. One day while working in the living room, I heard a very load pop and could discern the sound of gushing water. Running to the kitchen to investigate, I witnessed water spewing out the front of the boiler and a thick cloud of smoke filling the kitchen. Knowing that the boiler was electric and not wanting to be electrocuted, I ran to check the circuit breaker box that hangs on the wall in the foyer. A circuit had in fact been tripped but for good measure I shut them all off. Returning to the kitchen I turned off the water supply to the boiler to stop the flow that had now successfully doused everything in sight, opened some windows and called my counterpart. Within a reasonable period of the time the Electrician came over to assess the damage and discovered that the heating element inside the boiler had ruptured and made direct contact with the water inside the tank. Long story short, it took a few days to get the boiler repaired, but that was no matter since shortly their after all of the water to my building was suspended for the week due to a broken underground pipe elsewhere on school grounds. In hindsight, I wonder if the failure with the boiler had anything to do with the fact that initially every time I washed dishes a small electrical current would provide a less than comfortable shock. No matter I suppose, as the shock went away as soon as I put my papuci on…
All of this is well and good, and following the old adage of “sh!t happens” all I can do is shrug my shoulders and relax. The truth is that I am incredibly lucky to have been assigned to this site. The location is great, the school grounds are beautiful, the neighbors and shopkeepers are all friendly and the staff and counterparts here are supportive and helpful. Now if I could just get internet at home….I could actually post this blog entry.
Good luck to you. I’m jealous. If Romania lacks one thing it’s decent plumbing and plumbers.
John the Book Guy
estielmo(at)yahoo(dot)com
John,
Thanks for the comment. Sorry for the slow response, I’m still figuring out all of this blogging stuff.
The plumbing has only gotten more comical in the recent weeks. Asta e!
Cheers – Jeremy
Angles!
Obtuse.
Acute.
You got them here.
You are an Angle.