One of the most frustrating and annoying exercises this summer has been looking for an apartment.  Aside from the challenge of budget, we just don’t understand how you find apartments, as few are advertised. We told to everyone that we were looking, what we had to spend and where we had to live and they just shook their head.  The compassionate individuals would say something like – ‘Oh, there are plenty of apartments in that price range’ but never really produced a lead.  We tried agents, but the lack of a multiple listing system makes that a challenging event.  Our experience with the agents ran the spectrum from refusing to show a property unless we paid a showing fee of $5 per showing (which we refused to pay) to really hustling but have nothing viable, ie furnished.  In each case, once you were shown a property, a lot of effort was expended trying to talk you into taking it.  The most fun we had was just walking around neighborhoods and asking the merchants if they knew of any apartments for rent.  While this did not turn up any place to live, we were escorted around, introduced to everyone and offered lots of coffee.  We also have seen several areas of town the volunteers that have been here for a year have not seen.

In the end, a friend of Carol’s boss had an apartment near the center of town and was willing to rent to us at the price Peace Corp was willing to pay.  We think Carol’s boss did a lot of talking to get the rent price down, because everything we looked at was about 50% higher than allowed by PC.  If all goes well, we plan to move into the independent housing at the end of September.  It will be good to have this move behind us and we hope it is the last.