The Buildup

Inspirational song: Piano Sonata No. 8, 2nd Movement - Adagio Cantabile (Ludvig Van Beethoven)

In the late 1980s, Boulder and Dushanbe, Tajikistan (then one of the Soviet republics) became sister cities, and to commemorate the beginning of the relationship, the Tajiks sent Boulder an elaborately-carved and painted tea house, a creation of unimaginable beauty. Craftsmen built it by hand, using no power tools in its manufacture, disassembled it, and shipped it to the United States. Once it reached Boulder, it sat in crates for almost eight years, waiting for the local government to find a site to place it, and find private donors who would provide the funding for construction, so that they used no tax dollars to put it in place. By the time we left Boulder in the mid 1990s, it was still waiting for a home, and I had quite given up on it ever being put together. It seemed like such an insult in my opinion, to leave this beautiful gift lying in pieces in a warehouse, while local bureaucrats and citizens argued about where it should go and who should pay for and/or benefit from it. In all the time since it finally opened in 1998, I had never managed to go there, until tonight. It was worth the wait, but to return shall not take me another sixteen years. They're going to get to know me well there, just you wait and see.

For the first time since the week after the flood, fifteen months ago, we got to meet in person with one of the contractors rebuilding our condos. The man and I met up with one of the project managers, and were finally able to go over problems that we had with outstanding damage, and discuss finishes and add-ons. I was pleased at the kitchen cabinet installation, but that was just about where the victories ended. There is still no floor, and there are still holes in the drywall in two places, stemming from entirely separate flooding incidents, neither of which were related to the biblical flood in 2013. There is still a broken window, and all the existing windows that we have been asking to replace for a year are painted shut. The project manager tried to be reassuring, taking notes of everything we pointed out, and he said they expected to be done with our unit by the end of this month or the beginning of January. I can't see how that is possible, with where things are sitting right now. I had a nice long talk with one of the neighbors, whose house is almost ready, to the point where they have already moved back in, despite a long punch list of outstanding repairs. It sounds like her last year has been equally bad compared to what I've been going through, down to some of the same emotional stresses (she lost two elderly dogs during the same time frame I was losing my two elderly cats). She and I both will be deliriously happy come January 1, 2015. This year cannot go away fast enough for us. Now, if the construction could finally wrap it up as well, we'd be in business.

I looked it up, to see what Boulder gave to Dushanbe as a return gift to their sister city. The Internet says we started construction on a cyber cafe back in 2009, eleven years after the tea house was finally done, but there is no mention of whether it was actually completed. The man said, "Well, construction in that part of the world... It's complicated and takes a long time." Really? Are we sure it's not the Boulder side of the equation that is taking a long time?