So, I have a new flat in a new city, half a world away from the country where I’ve lived all my life – and which I love very dearly. It is not a tiny flat. It’s smaller than the places I lived in Rondebosch but I think it’s probably roughly the same size as the flat where on Katherine street in Sandton.
The Katherine Street flat, however, was modern and western and super-secure. This is not. I knew before I left home that I would be in a fairly student-y flat. Given that I’m doing what for many people is a student-type, just-post-varsity, almost-backpacker-nomad thing, it really is to be expected. That doesn’t stop me being sad that my flat is not pretty. My life for the last few years has been a succession of pretty homes which I have generally chosen myself (or which were my parents’) and which required very little effort to make them comfortable and homely. Even my res room didn’t take much to make pretty. Apart from the ages spent in hotels over the past 10 years, this is the first time I’m in a place that I haven’t chosen myself and which is likely to require quite a lot of effort to get it looking the way I’d like. Or perhaps it really won’t and I’m just feeling a little intimidated by the idea of being so far from home and am taking it out on the poor apartment.
The flat has 4 rooms. The main bedroom is big enough to fit, with reasonable comfort, a double bed and cupboard. It also contains a modem – which I’m hoping means that I will shortly be able to set up internet at home – which would add greatly to the flat’s appeal. The bed is reasonably comfortable even if it does creak. It appears to be one of those that you put together yourself from a kit, but which hasn’t been put together particularly well. The cupboard is fine, if rather plastic and even comes with coat-hangers – a huge relief given that I left mine at home as part of an effort to stay within weight limitations. The particularly interesting feature in this room is the window. Or rather the window covering. Most of the windows in the flat have 2 sliding layers on the inside-side of the burglar bars (if this country really has no crime, why are their burglar bars?). The layer just inside the bars is a fly-screen. Or rather a mosquito screen. This makes me super-happy – mozzies and other summer-heat-related bugs are my nemesis. The next layer is a clear sliding window (side-to-side, not sash). The final layer is smoky, patterned glass which, I’m guessing, is intended to replace curtains. In the main bedroom this is supplemented by a layer of thick and violently blue plastic. I initially thought that this was because there were no windows. Further investigation, however, suggests that it is probably just there to keep out the sun in the mornings. I feel that I may well remove it sometime soon. Especially because the noise from the middle-school across the road will probably be more of a wake-up call than the light.
Not that there is much natural light that will reach the windows anyway. This area of Daegu is fairly built-up. Actually, it appears that every area of Daegu is fairly built up. The view from the kitchen/dining-room, which is also where I have my computer set up, is of the next building’s stairs and front doors. Sigh. The kitchen/dining-room itself has some of the necessities of life. It has a cooker-thing (although I haven’t yet tried it), a lovely fridge, a microwave which is not plugged in – which may indicate that it does not work – and a semi-functional air-conditioner which is situated over the table and no longer has a remote, so that you have to stand on a chair and balance precariously in order to make it work. It also smells a bit mouldy.
The kitchen also has a typical student-digs collection of plates, cups, glasses and cutlery. I’m currently drinking espresso out of a tin (with ice) from a wine glass because there aren’t really any ‘normal’ glasses. The kitchen does have a table, which although not all that stable (I wouldn’t try sitting on it for example), is very convenient and would even mean that I could probably invite people to dinner if I had any people to invite. Or something to feed them. Apart from Spam. Why is it that in every digs you will invariably find some weird thing left by the former tenants? In this case that includes a large cardboard box – sort of a gift or presentation pack – of Spam. I’m thinking that perhaps the former tenant was American. Tenants, sorry. Apparently the previous person to live here had a wife. Not entirely sure how she coped. They have also left behind one egg, some store-bought ice – which is super given that the water here is apparently not great for drinking – and, oddly, a pack of cigarettes in the freezer. This last mystery I intend to explore further. Does everyone in Korea keep their cigarettes in the freezer? Does it keep them fresh? Were they hiding them from someone?
The kitchen is missing a kettle, which makes me quite sad. Once I have finished the tinned espresso my recruiter (who picked me up at the airport and brought me here last night) was kind enough to buy for me (along with some orange juice, some bottled water and some tomatoes), I will boil a pot of water on the stove to make coffee. Or tea, even. I wonder how anyone in a tea-addicted nation manages without a kettle? The kitchen/dining-room/now-study area also has space for sitting and to put stuff on the walls. So I will be putting up some lions and African-people-pictures just as soon as I can find some prestic-like-substance. Or perhaps drawing pins.
The second-bedroom-come-lounge contains one times single bed (cream), one times 3-seater couch (brown ‘leather’), one times big TV on stand (brown and with possible cable decoder) and one times fancy-ass Hi-Fi – that I’ll probably never be able to figure out – (in brown stand). And a coffee table. Everything in the room is brown or cream. If I end up spending a whole year here, I will most definitely be opting for a slightly less res-common-room circa 1970s (without the psychadelica) feel.
Which leaves the final room in the house and definitely the most interesting. And disconcerting. The whole place is a little bit like a cross between a Mozambican backpackers (mostly because it needs a good clean and the furniture looks like something someone else threw out) and a dodgy Grahamstown student digs of the sort that has been a digs for a very, very long time – and still has the original not-expensive furniture and obligatory bottle-opener. The one thing every digs and backpackers has, however, is at least one bath and/or shower. This flat doesn’t. Or at least, it doesn’t in the traditional west-European (and, let’s be frank, urban African) sense. It has what is known in some places (Turkey, possibly?) as a Wet-room. What this means is that the toilet and, in this case, washing machine sit in a tiled room, which has a drain in the centre and a tap and shower-head on the wall. In order to have a shower, you simple close the door and stand in the middle of the room and turn on the shower. I have already discovered one of the major drawbacks of this system – which is damp toilet paper. I also feel that it, surely, cannot be good for the washing machine to sit in a wet room and get showered on every day. Given that it’s a Korean-made washing machine, that this type of bathroom is apparently normal in this country and that washing machines apparently always live in bathrooms here, it’s probably fine. It just feels odd. Although, come to think of it, perhaps this is why washing machines, which used to be metal and occasionally rusted, suddenly started to be made of plastic at about the same time as the economic miracle in this part of the world. Food for thought. In the meantime, I’m going to have to used to a very different kind of shower-experience. And a perpetually damp bathroom floor.
But as much as I may bitch about it, there is a certain charm and sense of potential to a student-like place and I’m sure I’ll be able to make something of it for as long as I’m here. The only thing that concerns me a bit is security. There is only one door without any security gate and only one lock, for example. Not even a bolt. This is within courtyard reached by a locked gate. But the gate could be easily climbed over. According to the guidebook to Korea and all of the many forums (fora?) on-line, this shouldn’t be a problem. There is supposed to be a distinct lack of crime in this country. So even walking up a not-particularly-well-lit alley-like road, to a dark and not very well lit locked gate, through a courtyard and up the stairs, after a bus trip back from the school, should be fine. I am meeting my director shortly and hope to be able to confirm this with him. I’m guessing – given that the last two teachers who did my job lived here quite happily – that it is true. Which is going to require me to overcome all of the instincts which make my hairs stand on end and my shoulder muscles tense immediately at the very idea of walking anywhere alone at night. You can take the girl out of South Africa but it’s a whole lot harder (especially because the trip was hassle-free) to take the South African vreemdeling-vrees out of the girl. I anticipate a series of rapid, slightly terrified runs up the hill before I settle in. And that it’ll take time for me to get used to sleeping soundly with only one locked door and one locked gate as security.
It’s possible I may be moving at some point to a place within walking distance of the school. This would be preferable purely for convenience. But for now, this is home – many, many miles and a world of difference away from a small town in the Eastern Cape where I grew up.
3 July, 14:00 – PS Internet now set up in flat. Appeal greatly increased.