Yeah I’m on a roll today, weeks of nothing and all of a sudden I have lots today. Really I am a happy bunny but you know what they say, when you have been given good service maybe you would tell just one person, but bad service and you tell the whole world.

First of all before I start, I must blast my colleague. I ask for one day leave and he’s complaining. Not that he’s the boss or anything but has been given the title of team coordinator and I think the title has gone to the man’s head. Notwithstanding the fact that I have 24 days leave outstanding and the new year will give me an additional 25 days plus it is coming to the end of the year and I can only carry over 15. Plus working from home is a possibility and up to the manager’s discretion but my manager does not understand the whole notion of working from home so does not allow it, in fact I can sit here for 3 days updating my blog or spend the day at home and actually get work done, but the mere fact that I am behind my PC seemingly working and he can see me, puts his mind at ease that I am working. So I take it like that.

Anyway, I tell this colleague of mine that I will be taking Monday off and he looks at me and says ‘but Friday is a holiday and we are giving you a day off’. No fool, the government is giving me a day off alongside the rest of the country and Monday I am giving myself a day off so deal with it. The poor fool must have thought I was putting in a request. I asked the boss and he said yes subject to no issue with the team coordinator. So for me it was just an FYI.

The reason I actually need this Monday off is that I will be off to Cape Coast for a well deserved break outside of Accra, away from my mother and my auntie’s and in-laws and all the stresses that come along with Accra, which means that I will need Monday to sort out the house as I will not be there to do it on the weekend, got laundry to do, curtain rails to hang up and other little bits that I have been putting off for the past few weeks.

I have always wanted to own my own house, and being here, it has been possible, more possible than it would ever have been in London. For $60,000 (£45,000) I don’t think I could have even afforded a garage on the most ghetto estate of East London but managed to get a cute little 2 bedroom house with enough space to park the car at the front and a garden to hang my laundry and even have a small little gathering at the back.

My problem is however, with this whole gated community, estate malarchy. I thought that it would be easy, I pay them the money, the build a house, sort out the electricity, water etc… and security is their to guard the gates. Since I have moved however, I have had to deal with shoddy workmanship, a temporary electricity meter (I haven’t had a bill yet, I am just hoping ECG doesn’t hit me with one bitching bill), a break in (due to shoddy workmanship) and very poor customer service.

I won’t go into the break-in again, but I reiterate that the door was of such poor quality that really there might as well been no door at all, I have forked out for new ones now it’s better. So I sort out the door, get extra security for the windows, then I realize the roof tiles were not done well. I call for someone to come over, after numerous calls, and 4 floods, someone finally comes to ‘fix’ the roof. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, all I know now is that it rained the other day, although not as bad flooding as previously but then the rain wasn’t as bad as before.

The last thunder storm made me realize also that the electricity wiring was also shoddy. Since then my doorbell doesn’t work, the light bulbs in some of the areas of the house do not work, well actually I knew the electricity work was bad because the kitchen cooker plug has not worked since I got there but didn’t realize the extent of the crapness.

The last straw is the issue with the drainage which has just been discovered, we called a plumber in thinking it was only a small thing. Find out the outside pipes are well connected to nothing. So when I have a bath or sit on my thrown, all the waste water goes back into the foundation of the house. They claim someone has been to fix it.

This is why I need to rest and this is why I need to have the day off on Monday to go kick some estate managers’ arses. But the team coordinator doesn’t need to know all this, it’s not like he’s going to talk on my behalf or anything is he. His is to note that I will not be in.

On the house matter, I didn’t want to get bogged down with land matters, chasing up papers, then all the hassle with building a house yourself dodgy contractors, lazy workers, having to sit on people to make sure they do what the work the way you want it, but with all the wahala I have got in the last 7 months I’m wondering if I should have just done it myself.

The joys of being a homeowner…

Life was so much easier 20 years ago, all I had to worry about then was whether I had done my homework and if I had enough money to treat myself to a McDonald’s after school…