Comma Dot Comma

So, the sellers hired a general handyman with an apparent IQ of 65, or the work ethic of a grouchy llama, to make most of our requested repairs on the house. Some of his handywork:

Stuccoing over the hinges of a new door
Stuccoing a nearby treetrunk (or at least cleaning his tools off on it)
Causing a leak in a toilet that wasn’t there before
Putting one large dark tile in the middle of a sea of cream-colored tiles
Setting up the bathroom plumbing so that both the tub faucet and the showerhead run simultaneously. In both bathrooms.
One bathroom that used to work fine now has no hot/cold.
Filling holes in the siding with putty that has since dried and shrunk, instead of patching the holes.
Creating a new hole in the wall where he tried to install a new doorbell.

He has been let loose unsupervised in our future house for 45 days; who knows what other treats we will discover!

Thank goodness they used a real electrician and HVAC installer to take care of the really dangerous stuff.

Suspenseful question of the moment: Will We Close Tomorrow as Scheduled?

UPDATE*****

Superrealtor comes to the rescue! Our realtor, Becky Shaw, aka Ms Damage Control, got on the phone and sorted everything out in an hour. We are switching from the seller’s contractor to one selected by her, who guarantees his work. He will fax over an estimate and we’ll leave that that plus 1000 for unforseen issues in escrow. He will clear his schedule and work all day Thursday and Friday to re-do the bad stuff and finish the incomplete stuff. We will move in as scheduled on Saturday. Rock on.

Transparency international has come out with its annual survey results of perceptions of corruption around the world. The country where I served in the Peace Corps, Benin, is ranked 118th, among the lowest of the non-war-torn countries and similar to its position on the World Bank’s per capita income index. It’s interesting that citizens of the places with the least wealth to go around often have the highest perception that the wealth is not getting where it needs to be. In Benin, I recall, there is a general expectation that if someone gets access to wealth or power, it is that person’s obligation to pass some of it on to the family and village, regardless of where that money or time is allotted to be spent. If you are working with the Germans to build a highway, you’d better make darn sure that some of those bags of cement make it back home. Otherwise, don’t set foot in your village again. If the project runs out of cement before the highway is finished, well, that’s just too bad. In a contest between personal relationships and “the greater good,” the personal will nearly always win.

This image is from www.transparency.com, where you can see the full table and download the map.