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EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING – update after the fire.
by Yvonne 't Mannetje
Let me start by saying that we and the basenjis are doing fine again.
It took us some time though. After experiencing that first shock of being called by the police, about our house being on fire, we have come a long way. What helped us is we could actually do stuff. We had to do stuff. Lots of it.
The most frustrating part was to fight bureaucracy, to be able to get electricity again. The electricity was cut off as orderd by the fire dept. It took Stedin, the electricity company, almost 3 months, during which they followed all kind of procedures that were totally unnessessary for our situation. During this time we had lots of trouble with our generator, which was not meant to work 24/7.
This resulted in lots of interrupted nights, with Kees having to get out of bed again to repair it.
One of our friends couldn’t stand this any longer, and she contacted a nationale TV show “Hart van Nederland”. Once the reporters were on their way to us for an interview and to film our situation, Stedin panicked, and suddenly everything was possible. Within 4 hours we were finally back on electricity again. Stedin management came over to appologize, brought us flowers, refunded the 600 Euro we had to pay in advance, and they also promised to look at their procedures.
Since then we have been making the house become a home - our main priority. We picked up our lives, and have started to make plans again to build a brand new house.
The couch was very important to Dana - she was in great stress when we longer had a couch. She would not leave my friends house where she was sleeping on the couch.
Dana was all excited when the couch was delivered.
We even could find a spot for a little Christmas tree.
Kees has to share his home office with the basenjis, but they are a big help..
We are so grateful for all the help we received; all the support we got. In time of trouble you get to know who your friends are, and we feel so blessed to experience that we have more friends then we thought. The saying is so true, "every cloud has a silver lining".
