Summer Postcards
The Housing Game
It made sense that renters hold the upper hand in a city like D.C., where thousands of interns converge every summer and make affordable housing options scarce. But the D.C. housing game was complicated in a way I hadn’t anticipated: with so much demand, the renters were looking for more than trustworthiness or the ability to pay—they were looking for a winning personality.
The Hostel
Frankie (Newcastle) has brought two candles into the room, so we have two small huddles of light through which to strain to see each other. You can barely make out the bookcase in the back of the room, stuffed with falling-apart books, mostly in English. It’s deceptively valuable because books, especially fiction ones, are fiendishly hard to find and expensive in Tanzania. A picture of David Hasselhoff, made up of thousands of tinier pictures, hangs on the wall alongside abstract art by the hostel’s manager, Abby (Tanzania). Abby also paints stunningly realistic baobab trees, elephants, other wildlife. He told me it takes him an hour to paint the realistic pictures and four hours for the abstract ones.
In the News Cafe
I’m here to study Arabic for the summer on a “language immersion” program, a euphemism which here means “no English.” Fortunately, Irbid maintains a small town attitude despite its population of more than half a million, and finding conversation among locals is easy.
