Keys

In the house where I’m currently living, we go through a rather elaborate locking and unlocking procedure each morning and evening as well as any time we go out—a procedure that requires four different keys to leave the place locked up. At night, three padlocks are used to secure the main gate, and in the morning three different keys are used to unlock them. There is a key in each of the bedroom doors and a key for each of the two post office boxes we use. Each vehicle has a couple of sets of keys. There is even a key for the fridge. There are some padlocks we can’t open because we don’t have the key, and extra keys on the key ring that don’t seem to open anything.

December 1 is the date I am anticipating moving into the house located on the property where the school is to be built. Construction has been slow on these houses, but gradually they are being finished and the furniture arrived last week—a sign that completion is very near! On the weekend, we went over to clean up a bit and even move a few of our things there. If I thought that in the new house I’d enjoy some freedom from the Tyranny of the Key, I’ve since realized this is not to be.

The front door has a different key from the back door. The wardrobe in the bedroom has 4 locks on it, each with its own key and the top drawers of the dresser each have locks with separate keys. The bedroom has its own key and while I haven’t seen the fridges yet, chances are pretty good that they’ll also have a locking function. And that’s just for my house—there are six other units on the compound so far, each with the roughly the same number of locks! The situation will be further complicated by the different locks on the various buildings that house the laundry facilities, the storage areas, the generator and the vehicle parking. Of course, we definitely don’t want these keys to fall into the wrong hands, so there will also have to be a locked locker to hold all the keys for all the various locks...

Do all these locks make things more secure? In some ways they do, I suppose, but each night as I engage in the elaborate ritual of locking out intruders while locking myself inside at the same time, a vague thought often lingers at the back of my mind: “I sure hope the house doesn't catch fire tonight!”