Welcome To Flat 6

If you were driving through Kampala, toward Jinja and you took a short detour off the main road, past the Makerere University Business School and up Mbuya Hill past the military hospital (under construction), you would come across a little lane on your right called Sserenkuma Road.

Just a few meters down that road is a green sign with a carved monkey that says “Lakewood Estates.”

Sounds pretty impressive, I know. But here in Kampala, almost every apartment building or multi-family housing area is an “estate.” Or “suites.” Or even “manor.”

But Lakewood Estates is actually pretty accurate. There are 36 units, from large houses to detached cottages to apartments. We live in a flat on the 3rd floor of one of the apartment blocks. We have a nice balcony overlooking the pool and, in the distance (at least when the skies are clear), a view of Lake Victoria and her islands.

Lakewood Estates is populated by people from all over the world. Our next door neighbors are a British couple and their son. Across the parking lot is Pakistani mom and her daughter. A German family. A Belgian guy with his American wife and their newborn daughter. A Dutch husband, his Nicaraguan wife and their one-year-old. An Ethiopian couple and their two young children. This weekend an Indian family is moving in downstairs, taking the apartment that a Ugandan family just vacated.

Like most expatriate compounds in Kampala, ours has several layers of security. In addition to the fenced perimeter topped with razor wire and monitored by security cameras, we have teams of security guards. Some have pistols, some have ancient rifles and others have modern, impressive machine guns. A fair portion of our rent goes to pay for security.

We have a pretty spacious 3-bedroom unit. I use the main guest room as an office. The small guest room doubles as the laundry room. The master bedroom has a small desk next to a bank of windows with Sally's favorite view. She can see the pool, the lake and all the kids playing below.

When we first saw the unit, it was “furnished.” Poorly. Over time, we have slowly acquired some items to replace the brown/pink velvet sofa with grey/black accents as well as the mustard-cushioned dining chairs. After almost a year, our rock-hard sofa cushions are slowly relenting. As we wrote about in our March 30, 2021 blog post, all our furniture is locally, hand-made. It has taken months but everything has arrived.

We are largely settled. We have pictures of family and our favorite places up on our walls. But no matter the view or our comfort level, we still live in a developing country. Reminders come pretty regularly.

Power. The compound has a massive backup generator because the power cuts out multiple times every day, which make Zoom calls and working from home a constant challenge. You see, each time the power flickers, computers reboot and routers reset. We recently purchased small battery backups for our router and computers so we can weather power outages until the generator kicks in.

Monkeys. We have learned a few things about monkeys:

• They wake up very early.

• Immediately after waking, monkeys enjoy wrestling/running/jumping on any roof with people sleeping below. (They also crack the tiles which causes a roof leak over the same bedroom during the next rain storm.)

• Between 8-11:30 PM, monkeys very much enjoy teasing neighborhood dogs, causing endless cascades of vertical barking towards potentially monkey-occupied trees just outside our bedroom window.

• They are more annoying than cute.

Water. We are – hypothetically -- on city water. However, city water regularly and inexplicably vanishes for hours/days. So, we also have backup water tanks. Neither the city or “tank” water is drinkable (although you can cook with it).

This system works wonderfully. Hypothetically. Until the PVC pipes that feed the apartments from the water tanks possibly burst because (i) the tanks are overfilled, (ii) the plumber did not account for pressure within the system caused by sudden city water activations, (iii) God. THEN … maybe the tanks leak through the walls of your living room, fill up the stairwell with a fetching little waterfall and cause your apartment pipes (within the concrete walls of your bathrooms) to festively burst. Allegedly. Then it is entirely feasible that I stayed up all night on my birthday with several towels trying to keep the water from reaching your bedroom furniture, while Sally is home in the US. But all is well that ends well because after 5 months of nothing but cold water in our bathrooms, the landlord finally began fixing the water pipes and retiling the damaged walls. Which I actually ended up finishing.

You would think that one such incident would ensure adequate safeguards against a similar occurrence. Well THINK AGAIN! Because while we were gone for Christmas, the pipes burst and the tanks again emptied themselves into our living room, causing complete destruction of the tile and floor in that area. But, thankfully, the landlord learned his lesson and fixed the plumbing, for Pete’s sake.

But he didn’t.

Just recently, the pipes burst again. The bubbling brook down the stairway returned. Our living room walls began growing all variety of spores and seedlings. Fortunately, we were home to channel the water away from important things but it flowed for three days over Easter weekend before management came to close the spigot.

In the US, this would trigger a massive lawsuit. Here, it triggered a halfhearted “sorry.”

Ugandan Ingenuity. Lots of quality or specialty items are impossible to find here (appliances, car parts, etc.). The products that do make it onto shelves are often cheap and poorly manufactured imports. The items look OK but they rarely last. For example, we noticed 2 of our bathroom toilets were cracked so the landlord replaced them with brand new ones. That immediately cracked.

As a result, Ugandan tradesmen make do with what they have to limp systems along. Our guest bedroom shower curtain rod is held up by a string. The shower curtain in the other bathroom is chained to the ceiling with a dog leash. Outside electrical lines are strung in every direction where any stray gust of wind/monkey can bring them down … but they work.

All in all, there are many days where we just shake our heads and repeat a common phrase here. “T.I.A” which is code for “This Is Africa” and you just have to be patient and recognize that our western standards are not Ugandan standards.