Trying to make things work

I mustn’t go on about the negative sides of living in Africa, because I really am happy to be here. But, my goodness, can it be a frustrating place.

Saturday morning a technician came (the fifth such visit) to improve my very dodgy TV reception, having identified a piece I was missing in the cabling. After an hour of doing his stuff, voilà! TV!

I went out for a while and when I got back later in the day I tried the TV again, as instructed. And… nothing. Now I have no reception whatsoever.

I was however pleased to find that while I was out the missing piece for my oven – without which it cannot be used – had been delivered at last, after two months of asking. I took it into the kitchen to fit it, only to find that they had sent it one size too big, so it doesn’t fit into my oven. Oh well.

The reason I had gone out for a while was to collect two British-sized pillows I had commissioned. The ones on sale here are square, and so do not fit the British pillow-cases I had bought on my trip to the UK in January (having failed to find any decent ones here). So last weekend I found a place selling pillows, and agreed a price for them to make me two, leaving one pillowcase with them so as to be sure I got exactly the right size. Nevertheless my hopes weren’t high, which is just as well. They’d made me two ENORMOUS pillows, stuffed to bursting point with hard square lumps of something, and appear to have undone some of the seams of the brand new pillowcase I left with them in order to squeeze one of the new pillows into it. Added to which the satin-look cream coloured front side now has two blue biro marks across it.

I suppose if I do ever go back to live in the UK I will at least have a much greater appreciation of the fact that, generally, things (and people) do what they say they will.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No worries Louise, once you get to know Dakar, and get into a proper social network, you won't think about pillows and watching EastEnders anymore...and think about it, in Dakar you get proper food, proper dentists, doctors..god knows what. Will think about you next time I visit John Lewis...
Wish I could be in Dakar!

Louise said...

Oh I know, you are absolutely right (except that I never think about watching EastEnders - where did you get that from?!), and I do laugh about these things as well as moan. But it does put into perspective how (relatively) smoothly things work in the UK.

Unknown said...

Je remercie comme ceci programmes il s'agit d'un des programmes uniques.