Roommate - Collocataire

I have a roommate !!!

Maria from Venezuela.
She speaks spanish yes, everybody is telling me : oh great you can learn spanish !!
Wait people ! I'm there to learn english, let me do that first, I will see for the latino part later.

I couldn't afford to pay a rent by myself so I needed to find a roomate.
One bedroom, and one kitchen-living room, 1000$ monthly, water included, in Maxwell, good area in Barbados.
384 euros. It's not a lot but with zero income....

She's a friend's friend. She came to "visit" the apartment, so the tour took about 1 minute and 2 seconds, said yes ok, we shook hands and she moved in the next week end.


Finding a roommate in Barbados is almost Misson Impossible.
Why you ask? Why would a young person pay a rent when she/can stay by her/his parents? This is here's mentality.
The need of independence, autonomy, entering adulthood is apparently not existing, or at least, not enough to spend money on it.
Even working young people are by their parents, even at 28.
The movie "Tanguy" would be a storm of incomprehension in Barbados.
When you live by your parents, you save money, then you get married, and buy your own place.
This sounds like the oldest most archaic system to me, no offense Bajan readers, but my culture goes the opposite way in this area.
In France, as soo as you get a job, you leave.
You start life on your own. Learn to cook and clean for yourself, pay your own bills, deal with housing issue ( like plumbery or whatever), you don't depend on anybody anymore and that is the point, independence is the worst thing for us so we do what's needed to stop it and be you, not someone's child.


For families here who don't accept the sleeping over boyfriend/girlfriend idea, I really don't understand how it works. Hotels? cars? at 27? It's ridiculous to me. How do you know if you get along with a person if you don't try life in a shared place before you get married? How can you move in with someone if you don't want to pay rent? So you buy a house with someone you never lived with before in your life, it's stupid to me.
I know those statements/questions are against all religious principles.
My apologies I come from a too modern society. ( BING frontal attack !! relax !! being and thinking different is a right okay? this way of living is new to me so I observe, comment, and judge yes)

The roommie has the bedroom because I knew I wouldn't find anybody that would share an apartment to sleep in the kitchen and have no privacy at all. So  I sleep in the kitchen- living room:

I don't mind, I lived in 12 square meters and I was fine.

The place was "semi"-furnished. It was actually written "furnished" on the ad I found in the newspaper. Then the lady said "Yes, it wasn't written FULLY furnished".
But she provided 2 plates, 2 forks, knives etc.... how generous...
4 chairs, a table. Period.
So I improvised and got chairs that looked stored in the back of the building, dirty and not used, and found some pieces of wood to have a kind of cupboard.

When you don't have, you recycle !!

But again, I don't mind, I'm not "living" in Barbados really, I'm mean it's temporary, like camping, I don't want to invest to get stuff and then have to give them away or something. So it's ok.

I basically only go home to sleep and do some homework. I don't need a big space for that.
Maria works at day and goes to University at night, we barely see each other.
When I leave in the morning she is sleeping. When I come back in the afternoon she is gone to UWI already, when she comes back from school I'm out, when I get back she is sleeping.
Perfect timing hehe.
The only thing is for people sleeping over, as I said, zero privacy.

Other little thing, I had a washing machine, in January. And then the lady said: sorry you won't have access to the laundry room anymore since we have other tenancies, we don't want them to see that someone else is using their machine, so the room will be locked from now.
I said I took the apartment because it had 2 things: washing machine and wifi access. She said : sorry reread your tenancy contract, the washing machine was never included in the facilities. Right, it wasn't written.