So, the house is great, but it’s got…issues. We’re lucky – VERY lucky. We have a home with a roof, and the roof meets the walls all the way round. And under the roof we have our own bedrooms. And not just bedrooms, but a kitchen and a living room and a bathroom. And in the bathroom there is running water and a working toilet. And electricity lights up the whole house (except when it doesn’t). So we’re lucky – VERY lucky. There are so many people here with so much less.

But like I said, there are issues. The roof might meet the walls all the way round. But the walls in the drying room are full of un-meshed gaps, and there are holes in the window meshing in all the other rooms. And through these gaps and holes come mosquitoes and cockroaches and, worst of all, rats. And the electricity that flows into our wires also flows into my arm when I touch the plug-socket switch in my room. And it’s great that we can light the house, but not all the light fittings are working and some of them look downright unsafe. And the water that runs into the bathroom also runs down the bathroom walls whenever the stopcock isn’t turned off at the mains. And although we’re grateful that all our rooms have doors, we would prefer it if all the doors had handles and they all fitted inside their frames. So like a said – there are issues.

So here stands our first dilemma. Given that we’re so lucky to have what we have, do we have the right to complain that what we have is broken? Are we naive to be reaching for the standards we expect at home, or are we foolish if we don’t ask for improvements? If we go to the staff at VSO and ask for better living conditions, are we going to sounds like spoilt and insensitive idiots complaining that some of our hundred dollar bills are dirty and we can’t fit all of them in our purse? I’ve literally no reference points for any of this and I feel hopelessly lost.

Two rat interrupted sleeps and one mild electrical burn later, and my mind is made up – we decide to ask for improvements.

The good news is that almost instantly VSO send round a plumber, a carpenter, a pest controller and an electrician. The bad news is that as far as we can tell, none of these tradesmen have had any training in their respective trades.

The plumber and his apprentice bash around in the bathroom for a few minutes and then call Jo to tell her that they’ve finished.
“But it’s still leaking.” Jo quite rightly points out.
“It will stop in three days.” The plumber assures her, trying to take on the confident air of a man blessed with mystic powers in aquatic prediction.
“Surely it will stop when you actually fix it.” Jo quite rightly insists. The plumber looks slightly put out, but none the less returns to his task of bashing things about. Ten minutes later he calls Jo back.
“The leak has stopped.” He proudly proclaims, giving the worrying impression that this is the first time he’s actually achieved such a feat.

The electrician comes with no fewer than four assistants. They spread out around the house, stare at light fittings, play with switches, poke metal screwdrivers into live electrical sockets, and receive several electric shocks of varying severity. They pull apart the wires in my plug socket (amid actual showers of sparks) and wrap electrical tape around a few loose ends. They tell us they need to buy supplies and will be back tomorrow. They leave with the following reassuring words about my plug socket.
“We’ve made it safe for now. But try not to touch it.”

The following day they’re back as promised and set to work with a flurry of activity. Banke and I can hardly bear to watch, as all five men seem to be competing for the title of ‘most lucky to still be alive’. They lay new cables in my room and fit an entirely new plug socket. They mend the lights on our veranda, and in our hallway, and totally rewire the drying room to install an outrageously and unnecessarily powerful strip light. And for reasons neither Banke or I can quite comprehend, they break the light in our sitting room that didn’t even need mending.

As they leave, one of the younger apprentices whispers to Banke “I’ve left a note on your slipper.” Intriguing stuff. Naturally, as soon as they’ve gone Banke and I head straight to her room to find this fabled note. We look at her shoes expecting to find a folded piece of paper – but there’s nothing there. On closer inspection, Banke discovers the following written in biro, directly onto one of her flip-flops. “U are 2 nice. I really need u 4 friend. This is my line 07x xxxxxx”. We stare at the flip flop for a while and then burst into laughter. If the electrician had been someone that Banke had a blossoming interest in, this would have been quite romantic in an odd sort of way. However, as it stands, it’s just a surprising way to vandalise a stranger’s shoe.
“I can’t believe he wrote on my shoe!” Banke exclaims in amused outrage.
“I guess he wanted to find a direct route to your sole” I reply, feeling very pleased with myself, and relived that all the electric shocks haven’t blunted my quick wit.

As the night draws in we switch on the lights in our dark hallway. Nothing happens. We look up. The good news is the lights on out veranda now work. The bad news is, the electricians have rewired them to incorporate the bulbs from our hallway. The next morning I enjoy the novelty of being able to turn on my fan and radio using my new and improved socket. As I turn it off before heading to work I receive another (although to be fair, slightly milder) electric shock. Brilliant – back to square one.

The carpenter is a lovely quiet man with very few tools and even less English. He sets to work with minimal fuss and maximum effort. (With four doors to mend, one entire room to screen and the kitchen mesh to replace he’s going to be here for a while.) It all starts quite promisingly as he does an excellent job of fitting a handle to the drying room door. Unfortunately it goes down-hill from there. By the end of his first day’s work, we have two mended doors, one door which is now broken in a slightly different way, and one door that is now so broken it no longer locks or indeed closes. We also have a room with an extremely dodgy looking, half finished screen.

That evening we sit in our slightly darker house, looking at our newly broken living room light, and worrying about our now unlockable door. We try to decide whether we’ve just been unlucky, or whether there really is a total lack of training in the trade industries throughout Sierra Leone. The war brought this country to its knees. For the eleven years that it raged, the education system was destroyed, new skills were not learnt and old skills were lost. When things don’t work in Sierra Leone, the war is often cited as the reason. But the war was eight years ago and the country is still nowhere close to regaining its feet. The war was devastating, but the Sierra Leoneones we talk to say they are tired of it being used as an excuse. Things need to improve.
“The carpenter only had three fingers on one hand. Perhaps he lost the other in the war.” Banke muses, looking for an explanation for his lack of skill. My mind is preoccupied by rats and electric shocks and I’m feeling far less charitable.
“I should think it’s more likely that he accidentally cut it off with his own saw.” I say unkindly.

Whatever the reason, the situation is frustrating. We have all spent days in the house when we should have been at work, and lost weekends when we could have explored the city and gone to the beech, waiting for tradesmen to arrive and finish their work. And four days of hard work by some really lovely men has yielded a net result of very little improvement, a few new problems, and one amusingly graffitied flip flop. This morning we woke up to find water running down the bathroom wall again. It’s lucky in a way – we can ask the plumber to come on Saturday – we’re already waiting in for the carpenter and electrician to come back.