rent

Somewhere, I think in the front matter to The Nuer, Evans-Pritchard makes some rather off-hand comment about the poor slogs whose job it is to carry his packs around on their heads. His servants are scared of the Nuer, and the Nuer won't help him move his camp to drier ground. Poor E-P didn't exactly have an easy time of it. Nevertheless, his complaints can be read to fit within a loose genre of white colonials complaining about their black/'native' servants' inepititude.

Of course, if one is clever -- or one is Marshall Sahlins -- one could read the entire encounter as the reproduction and transformation of two cultural systems. In a truncated kind of way.

But me, I'm just trying to deal with my landlady. Who is Ghanaian. Who is absolutely not my servant. And who is making my life rather difficult lately.

(Marshall Sahlins, where are you when I need you? Nothing is quite as trying -- or quite as tempting -- as playing ethnologist on your own life.)

We have done a lot of misunderstanding. We have misunderstood that cleaning was included in the rent. (It was, she has insisted, not included, and I am now paying P100/month for twice-weekly cleaning and laundry. Although much of her argument rested on her maid having too much to do, and the P100 being compensation for additional work, the P100 goes in with rent, not to the maid. Make sense to anyone else out there?)

We have also misunderstood whether underwear is included in laundry. Granted, during Peace Corps training in Togo, we were made to understand that one did one's own underwear, period. I didn't actually find this to be the case in practice, but I do respect the principle. So my landlady made it clear that in her African culture, one's washed one's own underwear. Fine, I don't mind a few panties, especially since I'm not hauling the water from pump or creek, and there are a few items I would prefer to wash myself. That way, if anything happens to them, I have only myself to blame.

(I did my panty laundry today, and the maid, Christine, seems rather confused by all these goings on. I think it's all bullshit, frankly, since I see an awful lot of undies on the line that, I don't think, can possibly be Christine's. I think Christine thinks it's all bullshit, too, but I don't expect her to say that to me.)

Ag, god, ok, so there's the maid thing. Yes, the middle class in Botswana has maids. To quote my Setswana teacher from last year: "So, you know that Botswana has this culture of maids..." To be fair, some maids have their own maids. (Eat your heart out on that one, Arlie Hochschild...) But the domestic service economy here works differently than it does, for example, in the United States. Francis Nyamnjoh has written a book on xenophobia in southern Africa that includes material on maids. I am trying to decide whether it's worth international shipping.

So, in the next episode of a long chain of stupid arguments that have taken place far too much via SMS (text messages, ye North Americans), we are disagreeing about the lease. I have been pushing for a lease since I moved in here in mid-August. (I have been pushing, apparently, the wrong person: my landlord. I have a more amiable relationship with him, but it's becoming pretty clear to me who wears the pants in that household.) I have been pushing, and pushing... and I finally sent an SMS to them both, asking if it could be done before the rent is due on 16 September.

So today, my landlady's 13-year-old son brought me a sheaf of paper. (No, of course not, this couldn't be handled in person!) It is a two year lease --- two years!!! --- wherein the lessee (that's me, folks) must present "valid and sound reasons" for early termination of the lease to the lessor, who is then at his/her -- most likely "her" -- discretion to decide whether the reasons are indeed "valid and sound"!!! Should I break the lease prematurely, I am liable for the rest of the the rent included in the (two year!!!) lease.

I told my landlady the lease looked good, but it lacked a thirty-day no-fault release clause, wherein I (or she) give thirty days before the place will or (or must be) vacated. She balked, I told her no deal, and it went swiftly downhill from there.

She wound up calling my friend who had found me the place to begin with, and went down that friend's throat with her boots on. Said friend, who I had already SMSed about the situation, calmed my landlady down and explain a few things to her that, I only hope, got through. Friend and I strategized, and I think the best thing for me to do is to try to negotiate the lease to one year, with a 30-day notice provision, and a clause wherein the security deposit less documented damages must be paid back to me within 14 days of the termination of the lease. We shall see. I called and arranged to meet my landlady here around 6pm this evening. It's now 6:12pm.

Landlady has, as my friend pointed out, the upper hand because she actually has the security deposit in cash. I may wind up choking (as friend put it) on the security deposit. Either way, as soon as I saw which way the SMS conversation was drifting, I put in a call to an estate agent (realtor, ye North Americans) so I can find a better situation. P1900 is a ridiculous amount to be paying for servant's quarters --- I was nearly scolded like a child about this over dinner on Saturday -- and I don't like being someone's cash cow if I'm going to have to have a stupid fight about every bloody detail.