Clovers In The Atmosphere

So you might all remember my nigerian roommate. His light was frequently on in his room at two or three am when I would get up to pee. hey, my roommate's life is his. but he has recently been away in toronto for a few days and I have discovered why the light was on. He was receiving calls from Nigeria. He is away, and I was woken up no less than 4 times last night between midnight and 6 am by phone calls from people who spoke poor english who couldn't figure out why Osa wasn't the one speaking (two from father, two from sister). During the father's first call, I could distinctly hear a rooster crowing in the background. I can only wonder from where this call was being placed. Evidently, they also didn't believe me when I said he was in toronto but that I would leave a message for him to call when he returned, because the both called again. I have a little experience speaking to not-so-comfortable-with-english parents of roommates (freshman year of college) but this was certainly a new level of confusion and frustration. The phone definitely stays in the living room tonight. He has been away since friday and this is the first night the phone was ringing off the hook so I hope everything is alright. I also hope he hasn't been calling them on my line. suddenly the fish head soup doesn't seem nearly so bad.

A cultural complication to my rooming situation is the perception of Nigerians as scam artists. My roommate is a bit of shady character (up all night, doesn't speak or smile much, leaves without warning for 5-7 days at a time, tried to borrow money, found him in a hotel/strip club) and I am having a difficult time teasing apart these behaviours. Is he just a slightly irresponsible 20 year old? Is he in some kind of trouble that he needs to go off for a week (twice) nominally to get money? Should I hide documents with my personal information on them? Is that a prejudiced action to even consider it? I disliked my previous roommate, but I usually understood what he wanted, where he was going, and could count on him to pay bills. I don't have any of those things now and I can't figure out if it is because my roommate sucks or because we can't communicate through cultural barriers.

While we are covering nigerians, we had a second meeting with canadian housing NGO, and everything seems to be progressing smoothly. Ike and Grace have to visit the bank who will review their credit and see if they can be approved for a loan. the exact financial usefullness of the NGO itself is still unclear, but they alluded to certain types of aid and/or guarantor status they might provide pending the review of the financial landscape. so this meeting had a lot less BS. but Immanuel still refused to eat.