The Bolivian Stove Part 1

One of our first tasks when arriving in Bolivia was to find a permanent place to live. We checked the local newspaper the first week we arrived and low and behold the first place we visited had everything we needed and was in a perfect location for our family. We moved quickly and a week later signed the contract. The challenge with our new place of residence though, is that it is completely unfurnished. We thought you might enjoy hearing a few of our first furniture/moving experiences. Priority one was a stove. The landlord wanted to have the gas guy come sometime before we moved in so that he could hook everything up at once. That meant that if we could have the stove in place early we could take advantage of his "all in one" visit. Therefore my friend Derek and I (Derek is another missionary that lives in Sucre and works for Food for the Hungry) went to the local appliance place on Sunday evening to purchase the stove. As to be expected nothing happens fast and we spent an hour just filing out the paperwork and purchasing the stove. By this time it was getting late (on a Sunday evening) and it was dark. We drug the stove down to the street and hailed a taxi to take us to the apartment. After cramming the stove into the back of a hatch back car we took off for the apartment. Now the apartment is one of two buildings side by side and each building has several entrances and a parking garage. Not exactly sure of where to enter the building, Derek and I found the parking garage, which has an elevator, and asked the driver to drop us off there. We headed down the garage ramp looking for the elevator and noticed a short plump Bolivian man sitting at the entrance giving us a weird look. We moved on and starting searching through the garage. Keep in mind this whole time we are carrying a stove! Come to find out we were in the wrong parking garage. We hauled the thing back up the ramp and nodded awkwardly at the little Bolivian man who was now grinning ear to ear as to say, I knew you would be lugging that thing back up this ramp. Finally, after carrying the thing back around the building we found our entrance and headed up the elevator. When we got to the apartment we noticed something odd, the lights in the kitchen were on. I thought, that's weird since Jennie and I haven’t moved in and the landlord is the only other person with a key. We went inside and noticed the door to the kitchen was locked. Obviously the stove went in the kitchen so that was a problem. We knocked on the door and heard a woman’s voice say in Spanish “just one moment.” Completely confused, we waited outside the kitchen for our mystery woman to open the door. After about 3 minutes a short Bolivian woman opened the door and scurried out with a towel around her head. Come to find out she was the maid and she had been cleaning the apartment and decided to take a shower in the bathroom next to the kitchen before she left! Needless to say she was pretty embarrassed and didn’t stick around to help us move the stove into place. So…. that is the adventure of the Bolivian stove. Where is a good Lowe’s with free delivery when you need them!