Where Energy Flows

Posted by Deborah on behalf of Guest Author Oi Servais 

What do Interior Alignment™ Practitioners (or Teachers) do when they need to find a new home? What are their observations coming from the unique persepctives of Interior Alignment™? (Feng Shui, Space Clearing and Healthy Homes)  What can they apply from their training to find a place to live?

Here is a unique opportunity to find out!  Follow this series as MTIA Oi Servais (who is also a California Real Estate Agent) looks for a place to live under very challenging circumstances – in Brazzaville, Congo.     — Deborah, IA Blog Administrator.

Oi here…

I wish some of my fellows northern California Realtors could immigrate to Brazzaville. But who will come with me to the city classified by BBC in 2003 as the worst city in the world to live, coming in even behind Bagdad. So who wants to come and help me here?

I am sitting in the lobby of hotel Meridienne, one of the most chic, more decent and expats-oriented hotel in town, waiting for my ‘courtier’ (local french word for real estate agent) to show up.

“9:00 a.m. at Hotel Meriedienne, Madame,” I remember very well the courtier Jean Claude told me on the phone yesterday. “I will meet you at hotel Meridienne and we will go visit 3-4 houses that will work for you, in your price range. And you will make your choice.”

It’s already 9:45 a.m. and the courtier Jean Claude is still nowhere to be found. The savvy and experienced local french-congolese born professional who introduced me to Jean Claude warned me beforehand that Congolese time is not European time. You need to call them if they come late. In their language yesterday and tomorrow is the same word. That should give you enough of a hint about Congolese sense of time. So finally I decided to give him a call. When Jean Claude picked up the phone he was in high spirits.

“Oh Madame you are at the Meridienne already. I will come right away with a taxi and when I arrive at the hotel you will pay for my taxi.”

Here again is another real estate practice in this city. You, the client, provide transportation to go see the houses. I know that for sure. But I never heard of a client, waiting to meet the real estate agent for the first time, being expected to provide transportation for the agent from his home to come to meet you. It seems too absurd to be true by any stretch of imagination. So I called my savvy french-congolese contact who told me beforehand not to pay anything until I find the house that will work for me. Starting with paying for the taxi, you might end up having to pay for transportation to pick up his children from school and send them home too, (and how many children?) because he needs to work with you and therefore has no time to pick them up.

Ok, it was raining hard and the taxi fare was only 700 CFA (less than 2 dollars.) I feel the urge to pay for it but I know only too well that I should not. I remembered my experience in the lovely beach / petroleum town of Pointe Noire where I spent the last 4 years in a modern house overlooking the ocean. Of course the maid and the cook came with the house. The last day before I left, as I tipped them, I still remember how they looked so sad. Not any Hollywood professional actor could do better in expressing how sad they were to see Madame go. Their sadness is aiming at a bigger tip for the last time of course. What will happen to us when Madame leave? Will we be taken care of as well as when Madame were here? (which was only 4 years.)

But as soon as the new ‘Patron and Madame’ arrive they will ask for payment of this and that service they rendered that the previous occupants of the house did not settle with them yet. They will say the previous Madame still owed us so much and the new occupant needs to pay. That experience was still fresh with me so there is no way I am going to pay two dollars for this guy’s taxi. So I have him talk with my french-congolese friend, who is his long time client. I hear a loud scolding from the phone and Jean Claude politely repeats, yes Madame, Ok Madame, and then it was settled. He went outside and paid the taxi out of his own pocket — as it should be.

That was one thing settled. Now about showing me the houses. He started to explain that I need to pay the visiting fee of 10,000 CFA (about 20 dollars per house) for each house he shows me. This fee is not bad for the city where average household salary is between $100-200. The guy can ride along in his client’s car and knock on doors to show houses, spending one week-end showing 10 houses and he can already earn a month’s salary. No need for keys because every house always has one or two guards to open and close the gate. This is common practice and the guard also comes with the house.

Again this is not correct, and I say to him that I will pay nothing until he shows me the right house that I decide to rent. When that happens and after I receive a successful rental agreement and move into the house, he will then get his service fee equal one month rent or half a month rent depending on the amount of the rent. We discuss this for a long time and I again need the help of my french-congolese friend, his client, to talk with him on the phone. After this is settled, we finally get on the car and take off from the hotel to look for houses.

Now what about the area? In my rather high price range the guy shows me the area that is considered decent by local standard. In this area the car wades through murky water with garbage floating, on the unpaved tracks they call streets. I have never seen this amount of garbage everywhere along the city street like this before. Even though someone like me, who has already experienced Africa town for 4 years in Pointe Noire, plus two year in Kinshasa before, should have built enough shock absorbing immunity to garbage. I still cannot find a house that I can drive to on a normal road without big potholes on the road or a garbage pile that the car needs to cross. So I can only concentrate on the house, not the street that leads to the house. Not the neigbourhood either, because there are less than 1000 expats in the expansive city of Brazzaville and I can not expect to live in an area where all neighbours are expats. After all we are in Brazzaville and all these California real estate rules will not apply.

There is no official city garbage collector so each household manages their own way to get rid of waste. Most of the time they just pay a human push cart to haul their waste away and dispose of it in a dump — somewhere far that they don’t want to know about. For big places like an office or hotel, there are private truck garbage collectors that manage the waste. Of course it is a private enterprise and no one knows what they are doing with the trash. Each time I come back to Brazzaville from my long vacation at home in the well manicured and well organised country-club life style in Northern California, where it is considered a crime if our assorted coloured-coded waste and recycle bins are left in front of the house longer than one day after the pick-up time, I cannot help but wonder if this is really the same world.

Anyway, it has been a month now that I have worked with 3 well introduced ‘courtier’ in Brazzaville. I still not yet found any decent house yet. Most of what I see so far are either dilapidated beyond fixer-upper or sweat equity as we like to say back home. This is a real fixer-upper and will take quite an effort to make habitable.The only thing I should do now is just to network among the diminishing community of expats to see if someone will leave town so I can inherit their home. That, I believe, is the only way to get something habitable.

So today, I decided, will be the last day I will go out with the ‘coutier’. As Jean Claude got into the car, I asked, “Do you have anything in Mpila near the President palace?” Hopefully the road might be in better condition and it is considered a safe area in town.

“Yes , we have one house there you can take a look at. But first, I have to use your cell phone to call for the key to the house. My phone has no credit.”

And off course there it goes, the real estate practice in Brazzaville/Congo.

© Copyright Oi Servais, 2007. All rights reserved.

Tags: IA Stories, Interior Alignment Guest Authors, Looking for Home, Oi Servais

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