Apr
15
Today I had the lovely opportunity of traveling to Puerto Supe solo to see how our house is coming along, buy paint and make sure the basics would be ready by the time we arrive (hopefully Saturday). This was my first time going to and from Puerto in one day and it was a bit exhausting. I had an hour cab ride to the terminal and then a 4 hour bus ride to Puerto only to return a few hours later.One tough aspect in Peru is being certain that you're being understood. It seems people love to use the word claro (of course) even when they have no clue what you said. You also find your self asking the same questions and getting responses such as of course and don't worry (no te preocupes) Example: question - Which color of paint would be better? answer - Of course, don't worry)
I was able to experience the result of such communication today. Last time Hannah and I were in Puerto, we asked the workers to remove the broken tile in a patio/hallway/kitchen area and to replace it with colored cement. When I arrived today I found that there was some obvious misconfusion. When Hannah told them to pull up all of the tile and put the concrete on top; they interpretted it not as pull up all of the tile, but rather the entire slab as well. So the workers spent the last week tearing apart about 150 sqft of concrete (about a fourth of which they had replaced recently) with chisels and sledgehammers only to pour new concrete slab. Lesson learned. NEVER leave any point of confusion when explaining home repairs.
Although I ran into many similar issues and points of confusion. I even made sure to write the names of the paint colors on the walls to help eliminate confusion there. Hopefully everything is arranged so that at the bare minimum, our main living space will be ready for us, but hey you never know.
I saw them wheelbarrowing out concrete rubble the last couple days and thought to myself "that's strange, I thought they were done ripping up the floor." But as is my habit here, I assumed there was a good explanation.