Flatmate

Some of you will remember the house I moved into in Kabul with its eclectic group of inhabitants. Five of us initially: Three men, two women; a lawyer, a journalist, an accountant, one NGO head and our baby development worker. A mini NATO: Two Germans, one American, a Canadian and me, a Brit.

A trio of Afghan guards: Nabi, Mohammed Toy and the very tall one whose name I forget (or never knew). The maid, and then her cousin. Two tortoises and then Oscar, our orphaned gutter kitten. We were by no means perfect, but it worked – most of the time. But then came the consultant, who we will call Greg, who initially was gong to live in a yurt (nomadic tent) in the garden, before we all agreed that perhaps he could stay in the basement.

Then the night before he was to arrive, an email preceded him: "I will be coming with someone else. My wife. She's pregnant." The result, so it seems, of an unplanned one night stand.

And so there we were: seven . Well, seven and a fraction at that time. 

It wasn't long before the fractures appeared. The newcomers did not like Oscar. They complained about the risk of toxoplasmosis, even though you're more likely to catch it from uncooked meat than cat feaces. Still, they put up signs on their door “no toxoplasmosis” with a picture of a cat with a cross through it. Oscar was on to them – and would dash out of any room they were in, usually the rest of use felt like doing the same.

Other signs began to appear. We were entreated to close bathroom doors and wash our hands. I was chastised in an email for leaving one bathroom door open. Where the rest of us used what ever was in the fridge and topped up next time we were in the shop, they wrote their names on their vegetables.

Then one day I made the big mistake of asking Greg to wash up at least one of the two espresso makers he used each morning, and to please not stack up all the glasses in the cupboard. Ok, so a bit anal, but I did ask nicely.

Greg, however, did not like being asked to do something. He never used the espresso maker again, and started purposely stacking the glasses one on top of each other. I would take them down, and he would stack them back up …. When things finally came to a head and one of my other flatmates, who they had referred to as the Nazi because she had asked them to keep the kitchen clean on a Friday (no maid day), confronted them about the atmosphere, they brushed her off saying every one was petty and that someone had been eating their jam (I confess, that was me!)

In the end, I was asked to move out, and so Oscar, the Nazi and I left and found a lovely place just round the corner. Greg later did a runner, taking $10,000 from his NGO.

So the point of this story (despite having a little dig at Greg) is that you would have though that after that experience I would have been a little wary of living with a complete stranger again. But no, there I was in Brighton taking a lease on a two-bed place by the sea and advertising on websites for a flatmate.

And along came the mad scientist. At first, it sounded like a pretty good match. He's a physicist at Sussex University, who works on the Hadron Collider, a vegan and loved the cats. But the woolly hat had me worried, and when he showed up with three black bin liners worth of belongings … he's 44 mind you … I was well on the way to saying no, I've changed my mind. But I told myself not to judge – I could be wrong.

It became a three-month nightmare. First, he refused to talk to me most of the time, addressing all his comments to the cats. He would come into the house, completely ignore me in the living room and mumble to Woody and Ray “Oh, hello, how are you, ok, let me put the shopping down first, ….”. The only time he did talk to me was to tell me the cats were hungry/thirsty/tired/upset/bored etc … or to point out that my biscuits were not vegan.

He seemed to have an aversion to any type of cleaning, and became quite defensive and hostile when I asked him to throw away a basil plant, dead for days. He stormed out and came back quite drunk.

Then there was the shouting. Occasional bursts of expletives from inside his room, and what sounded like door kicking.

In the end, I asked him to move out. He responded “It's inconvenient”. I said, “tough”. He then preceded to go to Switzerland to bash atoms together and refused even to answer emails or texts about his plans. Finally, he returned and I confronted him. What are your plans on moving out? 

“Well, I've been away so I haven't found anywhere to live yet.” 

Me: “But you're rent has run out and you are now eating into your deposit.” 

"So, use my deposit." Door slams.

Eventually, he did move out, taking his black plastic bags with him, but slashing my bike tyre on the way out and leaving behind a charming picture of skulls in the bedroom.

End of Term

So the first term is over. Ten weeks, 20 subjects, 1,500 pages of reading, six learning journals, two term papers, 1 presentation and a 3.5 hour exam … yes, that is writing, with a pen, for three and a half hours. We received the paper two days before the exam, which in theory means it should have been a piece of cake, right? Well no. The questions were of course meant to test our understanding of a concept – just repeating the reading wasn't going to help.

The three questions I answered (in case any one is interested) were:

1. Take an example of “personal rule” within a government/organisation, explain how power was exercised and discuss the advantages and disadvantages for the country/organisation.
   1. I wrote about Mahathir in Malaysia who used the country's democratic institutions to do his authoritarian bidding …
2. Choose one of Nancy Birdsall's “seven deadly sins”. Explain its relevance in a particular country or donor organisation and make some suggestions about how to fix it.
   1. The seven sins are donor failings. I chose sin #1: Impatience, and looked at how the international community's impatience with institution building, impatience to see results and impatience to spend money had impacted on real progress in Afghanistan. I had few suggestions about how to fix it though, with the international community on their way out and the Taliban on their way in …
3. Is good governance necessary for economic development?
   1. This was a tricky question as “good governance” is one of those nebulous, hard to pin down concepts (as most are in political science) and which varies according to the academic or donor. But the crux of this question is that “the suits” (ie: the World Bank and IMF) have tied lending to developing countries to a transition to democracy and open markets, yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these policies are not necessary for growth. China, Singapore, Taiwan, S. Korea and even Hong Kong all developed under authoritarian rule with their infant industries protected by trade barriers until they were ready to compete. What's more, what the Bank and IMF fail to mention is that the US, UK and other developed countries also had very protectionist policies to mollycoddle their infant industries back in the early 20^th century and I certainly don't think anyone but the elite in Britain had a say in politics … so it's a great question to waffle on about how disingenuous donors are when they preach open markets and democracy to developing countries.

With that over, wrists aching and head pounding, it was off to a group meeting to discuss a project for an impact evaluation course, (the demobilisation programme of Taliban militants in Afghanistan) and then a brief introduction to some field work we need to do for a course next term: Empowering Society.

Finally. It was the bar, and the panto, an IDS tradition where the students mock the teachers, and everyone mocks the industry. Based on the occupy Wall Street and everywhere else movement, it featured a crew of hippy “occupistas” camped at IDS; a researcher intent in studying their participatory-led community-based sanitation; throw in a Lady Ga Ga number and a West Side Story style dance off between the "suits" (see above) and the occupistas, and that, was the end of term.