Apartment Hunting

After sleeping off Oktoberfest, our plan was to check out the local farmers market (except most of it is shipped in from Europe) to try to curb the unbelievably high costs of everything in Kinshasa.  The produce was similar to everything we could get back home. This includes Avocados (actually grown locally)!  However, the golden rule for produce (supported by recent digestive activity from both of us) is simply “Peel it, Boil it, Cook it or FORGET IT!”  If you plan to visit, don’t expect a garden salad to go over well internally.

Later we went to look at an apartment.  We planned to meet a guy named Jim.  After being let through the gate, we asked the guards if Jim was around to show us apartment #9.  One of the guards left to get him.  We parked and a few minutes later a guy approached us.  We asked if he was Jim.  He didn’t really answer and then asked if we wanted to see the apartment. We said yes. He took us up to his office and started telling us about the three month advance in rent, the three month security deposit, the 5% commission, and on and on.  Finally, we said “Can we go look at the place and discuss this later?”  He agreed.  We walked along the row of apartments past Unit #9, which had a Pour Louer (For Rent) sign in the window, and over to Unit #4.  “How about #9?” we asked. “Let’s go to #4” he said.  O.K.  Unit 4 was still under construction and clearly wouldn’t be ready for at least a few weeks.  “Jim” said it would be ready soon.  We finished looking at the place and “Jim” said “Let’s go back to the office”.  On our way, with “Jim” in the lead, we received a phone call from guess who? Jim! He was standing in apartment #9 wondering where we were. We quickly ditched fake Jim and met up with real Jim in #9 which was a great apartment that we hope to move into soon.  

Luckily Toni Lyn’s friend/colleague has been generous enough to show us the ropes of the real estate game here.  It is a very complicated and unpredictable game (one of our jokes/much repeated phrases in French here is “C’est compliqué!”) and I am not sure we could be doing it with confidence without him.  Finding our home for the next year has taken up a fairly large amount of our time and focus over the past couple of weeks and we will be ready to celebrate when it is over.