Eviction Notice
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 01/Feb/2010 07:45, 34 days ago
January 30thEviction NoticeThe rumors have been circulating for a while:There’s a cardiologist coming from India to start the new IHK Heart Centre. (I’m going to refrain from commenting on the wisdom of putting a ‘heart center’ and ‘cath lab’ in a hospital with a barely functioning museum piece for its main x-ray and an emergency department that doesn’t consistently have oxygen, let alone an EKG machine, in its main resuscitation room.) The new cardiologist has a family and is going to need a house… Ian is thinking about giving him ours… blah… blah…But IHK pretty much runs on gossip and rumors, so I figured that when the time came to actually make a decision, Ian would have the courtesy to come and tell me about what he was thinking. Apparently not.On Thursday, Dorothy, a second or third tier administrator from Human Resources finds her way to the closet I call an office (which I share with Justine, senior sister for OPD and Linda, team leader for emergency) and nervously sits down.A bit of background. The house I live in with two other volunteers (Helen who manages the IMF which is the funding for the charitable work at IHK, and Cara who heads the physiotherapy department) is rented by the hospital. Before the volunteers lived here, Ian’s adopted daughter Rose (see much earlier post July 09 about Rose’s walk) lived here when she was clinical manager for the hospital, before she went to Yale to pursue a PhD. The house is furnished with Rose’s belongings. Rose left her stuff in Helen’s care. But ultimately the house is under IHK (Ian’s) control. It is a lovely sprawling 4 bedroom house, probably pre-independence era on a big lot (mostly left wild and unfinished and a place for Wilburforce to disappear into and come back out with a jack fruit or mango or spare auto parts), fenced and gated and within walking distance to the hospital. But it has failing plumbing and electrical and crumbling structure. In other words, it’s the perfect house for volunteers but you probably wouldn’t want to live here.So Dorothy starts this long preamble about the new cardiologist coming. And his big family. And how hard it is to find a house in Muyenga (It’s not hard to find houses in Muyenga—you just have to be ready to outbid the American Embassy which is in the process of moving its staff to this, the perceived safer, side of town. And the new cardiologist, as part of his deal, is going to get a car, so he really doesn’t need to live withinwalking distance of the hospital). And therefore, it seems, well, that is to say, Ian has decided, that the only possible suitable place in all of Kampala for the new cardiologist to live just happens to be the house I’m living in.I have to move out the first week of April.But apparently Dorothy told Cara we’re moving sooner?The suggested living alternatives are not nearly as appealing as my present digs. Small rooms in smallish apartments. With single women as roommates.Another bit of background. In Uganda, if a man and woman spend the night under the same roof, they are assumed to have had sexual relations. Even in Kampala. Nancy wasn’t particularly happy when IHK moved me into a house with two women, but at least in my current living situation the neighbors (and even the girls in HR have asked the question openly) have to guess as to which one I’m sleeping with. (Just for the record. I’m not sleeping with either or my housemates.)It’s all so very complicated.And to complicate things more. To our usual Friday night, end of the week, south side volunteer, beer and bitch session at Fuego, Sally (not a volunteer, niece of Ian’s business partner in the construction business and here as a sales agent for Ian’s new housing project… did I just say housing project, hmmm.) brings the new cardiologist.Well, he’s not really a cardiologist, he’s a cardiac anesthetist. (who knows, maybe anesthetists do cardiac catheterization in Kerala?) His name is Prasandan and he seems to be a very modest, likeable, smart guy. It sounds like he has a critical care background as well—which is good, maybe while he’s building the new heart center he can work on improving the mortality rate in the ICU.So we all went out to the Coconut Shack. For Indian. And Sally is rambling on about how good the Indian food is here in Kampala. And Prasandan is poking about his aloo gobi like something died in it. And someone asks Prasandan where he’s going to live. And he says something about a nice house in Muyenga that’s coming vacant soon…