For this post, first thank you to all my friends near and far for really supporting me. I have had a really difficult few weeks in Lima recently, and if it were for my amigos near and far, I don’t even know how I would still be surviving. And apologies for not having written on the blog the past few weeks, but the simultaneous troubles at work and at home were far too close for me to be able to detach and write comedically about it. (Will only comment about home problems; can’t even speak about work things now.) So I think now at least I have reached a certain level of calmness that will allow me to share this experience.
I will just write the tips in dealing with problems with your Peruvian household for my expat friends here. All of these are just observations from my expat friend who helped me today (living here for 7 years), so my lovely Peruvian friends, I hope you don’t feel offended. I think the Peruvian people are very kind and considerate, I am really only talking about how I dealt with the workers today.
If you want to hear the story, skip past the numbered points:
1. Usually when you are dealing with any type of customer service, they take your number and call you back to set up the appointment. Don’t ask me why they don’t just make the appointment right there…but that is what happens. A lot of third party stuff going on.
2. You need confirmations with everything. Because just because they say they are coming it doesn’t mean anything usually, as the message often goes through three or four workers (I don’t know why). Things are so easily lost in translation, you just have to keep on asking and asking. Note the time and person who you spoke with on the phone.
3. I am told that confrontations are usually undesired here. So sometimes people may just tell you what you want to hear to appease you. Always always always seek a second and third opinion. I’m not quite sure exactly who to trust, but I keep going to the person highest up for answers. At least that way I can cite that I went to the guy at the top when there is a problem.
4. Things work on Peruvian time. See below. Waiting is inevitable.
5. There is something called the Libro de reclamaciones on almost every company website or store, which is essentially the complaint book. Something that seems to wield some power, because I heard when you mention that you want to file a complaint, people seem to push for things to get done faster. Cuz when we mentioned that we were going to file a complaint with the Libro, things moved a little faster. Good to know.
6. Crying, I was told, in front of your landlord may help. I have yet to try that.
7. You will be presented with excuses. Keep insisting your point. You unfortunately have to be a little more tough and firm to get your point across.
8. DEEP BREATHS. It is just how things are here, and seems like everyone I have talked to (expats and locals) has had nightmares with housing problems.
My very good friend Erin, who has been supporting me and showing me the ropes all this time, taught me one very important phrase: “Si no te ries, vas a llorar”, which translates to “If you don’t laugh, you will cry”. Most people will know that relocating to any foreign country is difficult to adjust to. I have done it twice in my life, but none has been so far so difficult as Perú.
First, another phrase to learn: “la hora peruana”, which is loosely translated to Perú time. Now aside from the Swiss, I think every culture in the world has a certain degree of tardiness. Chinese banquets, for example, usually are deemed at a certain time, but you will always get those who show up an hour or even two late. We have the term “fashionably late” in N. American culture.
Perú time reflects both the laid-backness of the people here, which is kinda cool (not everyone is tied to the clock), as well as the difficulty to really get anywhere due to the horrible traffic. But it also means people don’t show up on time, if at all.
I blogged about the water leakage into my apartment my 2nd day living here (August 3 it happened). It happened again, of course, and this time really all they did was put a tarp over the roof. And it still took 6 hours to do that, while I was sequestered in my apartment and losing a day at the lab. That was my 2nd week here. As they left, they said they would come back and fix the roof the following week.
3rd week here: the fun with windows. I have a few little windows or ventanillas along my leaky roof, and when I moved in, I noticed that two panels were missing. Like not even there missing. Which means every time it rained or was windy, water and dust was just blowing right in.
How did I not notice this?, I wondered…but I have high ceilings and this panel of windows wasn’t immediately visible to the eye unless you were looking up to find out where the water was leaking from your ceiling. How convenient…so I asked the maestro or “master” so to speak when he was fixing my roof the 2nd time to come fix my windows. He said he would do it at 8am on a Saturday (great, another weekend sequestered in my apartment.)
Saturday 8am…they didn’t show. They didn’t show until almost an hour later. The glass repairman came in, and instead of actually putting glass in, they spent about 2 hours reinforcing the roof with wood. Not bad, there was quite a bit of water damage and probably better that they were doing that. Except, of course, they splintered wood all over the counters, the floor and pretty much everything in the kitchen.
Then comes the coup de grace…as they reach up to do what I thought was actual replacement of the window, the worker breaks the window and glass just rains down and shatters all over my kitchen. O.M.G. Luckily no one was standing anywhere near the worker up on the ladder, but it was a pretty terrific sound.
I was watching them clean up the pieces and sweeping the counters and cabinet tops, and could see all the pieces they missed. Best purchase I have made so far in Perú, my fellow gringos, is a vacuum cleaner. Bought one at Saga Falabella for s./120. Super powerful little thing. As they kinda finish sweeping, the workers turned to leave, and I said, “Whoa whoa, espere un ratito. ¿Todo terminaste? ¿Ha arreglado el techo? ¿Qué vas a hacer con las ventanillas?
“Whoa whoa, wait a second. You’ve finished everything? The roof was fixed? What are you going to doing with the windows?”
Then I get the craziest answer I have ever gotten…
Worker: “Oh, the roof was already fixed. We put a piece of plastic over it. We didn’t bring any additional glass today, so we’ll just come back another day. What time will you be here on Monday?”
I was thinking, why didn’t you actually bring the glass when you said you were going to replace the window???!? It didn’t make any sense! So now instead of two windows missing, the entire panel was gone, and I was left with a huge hole in my ceiling.
I very sternly replied, “I have to work on Monday! There is no way that I am going to miss a day of work so you can finish the window…but I guess I have to coordinate with the landlady cuz I have to see my schedule.” And with that they turned and left.
Well, just my luck, that day it was extremely windy. And imagine all the dust and pieces of ceiling that was flying in through my now very big windowless hole at the top of my ceiling. Not to mention the shattered glass all over the floor. I hurriedly finished all the cleaning, making sure that no shattered glass would harm my friends who were coming over that night for dinner.
Well, after much thought, I decided to just bite the bullet and stay home and have them fix my window on Monday morning. So I asked the landlady to coordinate the maestro to come at 9am Monday to fix the window, thinking at least if I was going to lose another day at lab, I could at least rest a bit (I wasn’t feeling too good on Sunday…had a little fever through the night).
Well Monday morning, guess what time they showed up? For once, it wasn’t a la hora peruana. They showed up at 7:30am. And all they did was to put in the glass; took no more than 5 minutes. 
Why couldn’t they have just replaced the glass so I wouldn’t have to miss a morning of work…?!?
Well at least now I have windows…hurray.
4th week: My first Saturday without having to wake up early to let the workers in, hurray! Had spent a lovely Friday (which was a holiday for Santa Rosa de Lima, the patron saint of Lima) traveling to the temples of Pachacamac, which is about 40 minutes from my place in a district called Lurin. 400 hectares wide, it is home to multiple Incan pyramids and ruins that are older than Machu Picchu (more on Pachacamac in another post!)
I finally felt safe enough to have a house warming party, so happily strolled off to the market to buy pisco (a very popular S. American liquor that you use to make pisco cocktails with fruit juices and sugar) and food for dinner.
I come home and noticed that the apartment smelled kinda foul. I walk in and this is what I saw:
I walked into the bathroom and saw the same thing in the shower and a flooded bathroom floor. (I could not bring myself to take a photo of the shower, but I will say it was much more foul). Imagine my surprise finding sewage water all over my kitchen and bathroom.
I cleaned and cleaned, and immediately called the landlady. No answer. I must’ve called about 10 times. In my panic, I ran upstairs to my neighbor (the gentleman who was a part of the Claro fiasco…we will call him Bob) and asked if he had any problems with his water. He said no, and when I told him what happened, he informed me that the water of the entire building with 9 apartments was connected through one 40 year old cement pipe. And since it was Saturday, everyone was probably doing laundry and flooded my apartment.
Oh fun…without any landlady to help, all I could do was clean it and wait. I did send her an email telling her exactly what happened.
I threw the dirty cloths I used to soak up all the water and disinfect my bathroom in the wash, using the “rápido” or fast setting that used very little water and only lasted 18 minutes. 5 minutes after the laundry was done, I again smelled the sewage water, and lo and behold, the kitchen was flooded again.
Aaaaah..! So I then was worried that I wouldn’t be able to flush the toilet or do any more laundry. It was 2pm, and my guests were arriving at 6:30pm. Frantically, I cleaned and disinfected the kitchen (luckily the bathroom was unaffected), and called the landlady again. No answer.
I also called Erin and told her what happened. She was laughing cuz she knew all the fiascos I had in my apartment, but told me not to worry and that she and our friends would come and help clean if needed regardless. I was really grateful for her sense of humor. But I was also imagining all my friends being flooded with putrid water…oh what a way to warm the new apartment, eh?
So I quickly cleaned again, and then had to get going on my menu for the dinner (sloppy joes, salads, cheese and cracker hors d’eurves, my lazy version of chinese green onion pancakes using wonton wrappers, and of course, prepping for our Pisco cocktails.)
I was cutting and chopping up all my ingredients, feeling a little calmer. 5:30pm. I wouldn’t have believed it except I was there. Water flooding…again! In the kitchen. This time I knew it couldn’t have been me. I wasn’t even using the water. Same putrid smelling gross water leaking into my kitchen. I could even see that this time, it was leaking between the cheap wood-looking floor panels, and also from the drain from the laundry sink inside the apartment.
This time I was just ready to punch a hole in the wall, I was so frustrated. I’m pretty sure I popped a few blood vessels in my neck. But I couldn’t do anything but have Bob loan me some air freshener and put my fan on full blast. Oh and of course, open my newly installed windows.
Luckily people perhaps stopped doing laundry in the evening, as no more major floods happened that evening. The party was fun. I learned to make Piscos properly with egg whites and bitters, as well as enjoyed some really tasty Peruvian desserts. And our friend David led a sing-a-long of Peruvian songs on his guitar…fantastic!
This is where Bob really came and rescued me, and I feel he is my guardian angel here…
During our party, the landlady finally calls and I told her what happened. She said she would email me and coordinate a gasfitero or plumber to come to the apartment on Monday. She again said she was out of town and couldn’t help in person.
So I told her 8 or 8:30 in the morning on Monday…even though I didn’t want to miss work, this was obviously a huge problem. Bob said that since he wasn’t busy and in between work, he could come and even take care of the workers for me. (eyes popping out of my head…totally shocked and grateful). But I knew I also needed to stay, so decided Monday 8:30am would be ready for the gasfitero.
Monday 7:50am: I couldn’t sleep well, so woke up early to wait for the workers. Bob said he would come down and help me speak with these workers. He has been living in Lima for 7 years and his spanish is way better than mine. And he knows how to work the system. So I waited…and waited…by 9am, they still didn’t show. I called the phone number of the maestro, and he said, “Oh yeah…we will come in 1/2 an hour”. And for 3 hours they didn’t show…
While it gave me an opportunity to share some breakfast and learn all about the exciting life of Bob (he’s pretty much done everything, lots of experience, a very passionate freedom fighter and defender of the unjustly treated like yours truly), it was getting ridiculous. Bob literally yelled on the phone several times at the maestro because he kept saying “in 30 minutes…in 30 minutes…” And then finally at 11:30 we were startled by a knock at the door.
Finally the plumber came. They inspected my apartment and kept thinking it was my fault that the water backed up. Bob had to keep insisting that this happened while I was just sitting and working on my computer, so it couldn’t have been because of me using the laundry or the bathroom. In fact, this was kind of the interesting part…Bob told the workers that the water came in 3 times and it upset me so much that I was crying (which I wasn’t at the time…but seemed to be working to good effect.)
So then the maestro and gasfitero went outside to the see the caja or the drainage pipe and then said, “Oh, it’s not our problem. It’s a problem with the city water system. Call them.” I was like…”what…?” How could they just pass the blame to the city…? And funnily enough, they were there to renovate the my landlady’s apartment next door. When they walked in, they too found that the entire apartment was flooded with sewage water. It was even worse than me. (Karma much?)
Well, about 5 of my neighbors seemed to all magically appear at once and the engineer neighbor helped us call Sedapal (http://www.sedapal.com.pe/), who are the water municipality here in Lima. They sent a truckful of workers around 2pm. They took one look at the caja and said, “this is not our problem. This is the problem of the building.”
At this point, I am ready to sock one of them in the jaw, but Bob did the yelling for me. (Although maybe yelling at them in Chinese would have been effective too…) But these guys didn’t care, they just got back into the truck while Bob chased after them telling them, “it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. You have a responsibility to fix this as it could turn into something more serious.”
And I learned a new phrase today: agua de caca…which is pretty much poopy water. The funny thing is that Bob kept saying, “La señorita no puede vivir en un departamento lleno de agua de caca.” Without even explaining to me, I knew what he meant by caca, lol. Basically he was insisting to everyone that I couldn’t live in an apartment full of poopy water. The funny part is that the word caca is not a proper word to say when dealing in business matters…well, it’s the same as if you said “I am going to take a poopy” to your boss during a board meeting. The proper word would be hueces, but caca is just more graphic and effective in my opinion.
Anyways, Bob decides to call an emergency plumber who should be able to give us an official diagnosis of the problem for 20 soles (like $9), so that these plumbers wouldn’t be able to just go back and forth about whose problem it was. We called at 3pm. Oh yes, here we go again with la hora peruana…dude doesn’t show up until 6:30pm…o_O
Not only is he late, he pretty much didn’t do anything but say, “it could be a problem with the pipe, it could be a problem with the drain.” I was pretty livid, as was Bob. Bob said to the worker that it wasn’t a true diagnosis, that we weren’t able to give that description to anyone to argue to anyone else that we could find someone accountable. Because apparently, no one was going to do anything as long as they thought they weren’t accountable. And apparently, that seems to be the common attitude here…I faced it with the banking system, I faced it with the workers in my apartment, I faced it with my phone company…
Bob worked his magic and was literally yelling at the guy. I felt a little bad for the worker, because he was saying that the company had a mixup with communication. But of course, that doesn’t matter. Giving us that excuse doesn’t mean that he could just a) show up 3 hours late and b) give us nothing to go on in terms of a solution. All he said he could do was bring his machine the next morning (why don’t they just bring all their equipment on the same day???) to do exactly what the other gasfitero was going to do at 9am tomorrow morning? (*cross fingers*)
So we will see…tomorrow the maestro is supposed to return with the gasfitero with some machine to clean the drains. Another day sequestered in my apartment for me. Bob is so awesome to keep helping me, am forever indebted to his help and support. And also all my friends here in Lima who immediately offered me a place to stay…luv you all. And of course, all my wonderful friends and family back home.
I still believe things happen for a reason…maybe it is to show me that I have amazing friends here and at home. Maybe it is to show me that I am not so alone. Or maybe it is just to teach me how to complain in Spanish. But I am grateful to my friends for their support.
So till next time…to my very crazy apartment. A housewarming gift from Erin
I need a Pisco sour…
"Almost 1 year" in Peru 