Housing – is this ‘how it works’?

Hard to believe what happened today. After all the discussions and thinking about how to get a flat, it turned out that talking to lots of people was what won the day. After visiting a few places (Phoned one agent, who picked us up in a flash white pickup truck, dressed in a sharp suit & gold watch, within 4 minutes... another gang of blokes took us to a flat up a hill which they didn’t have the key to and then said “wanna move in?”... unlikely without seeing it!?) we ended up waiting for a taxi...
...instead of a taxi, a normal car pulled up and offered us a lift. Slightly confused, we walked away but people shooed us back so we got in. Turns out the couple in the car were a policeman and counsellor from the Sierra Leone Special Court (trying Charles Taylor...big UN thing). After mentioning our housing desires to them we ended up with a phone number... 20 minutes later we were at the Special Court security checkpoint and 5 minutes after that we were chatting away with someone there who ended up being able to put us up...in his colleague’s house. Odd – but people keep saying that this is how things work here...(maybe for foreigners!)...