Grandma's Journal 10/13/08

Another day in the life of a Zambian transplant. (By the way, I don't have time to proof read today, so whatever.) The day started out just great. A few mins after Mike left for work I locked myself out of the house. It's not like you can "break in" to any of these houses. Bars on the windows, double locks on the door, double doors. So we had to send out for help. (Actually, I didn't lock myself out, it's just that when I closed the door, the inside lock fell down and locked itself.) Sarah, the guard for the daytime 6 to 6 shift suggested, after laughing a lot, that she go down the street to another guard she knows who has a radio. She did and they are talking on the radio to dispatch and laughing hysterically. "No...the Madame is outside the house...No the door is locked and the Madame is outside!" They were all thinking this is really funny. So they say they are going to send someone with a key. Well now the lock which locked itself automatically, doesn't have any key that I know of, I don't have a key to it. So, maybe they do. Approximately 2 and 1/2 hours later a guy shows up. He was very nice. He had tools and took a hammer and screw driver to the hinges and took the door off. Then put it back on once the "Madame" was inside the house! During all this the gardner we recently hired to clean the messy and trashy and leaf blown yard was raking and burning trash and leaves. We hired him to do a thorough cleaning of the yard and what we thought was a one time thing. Agreed to pay him K300,000. This was the price he asked. He doesn't speak very good English, is very hard to understand, even tho I was using Sarah, the guard. to help translate. (The company was supposed to have someone come and do this for us. They don't do much of what they say they're going to do. As a matter of fact I'm home this a.m. because the TV guy is supposed to come and set it up. It's know 1:30 pm and no one has come. If he comes this afternoon...too bad because I'm going with Sadna over the Suzannes and we are playing cards like some old bitties would do.) So anyway, this little, skinny, extremely soft spoken and humble man who looks like he hasn't had a good meal for days, is working in the yard. So Mike's at work and told Bob (his boss) that we agreed to do that. Bob had a fit because we were giving him too much money and he was ripping us off and k300,000 is how much he is supposed to make in a month, not in a few days. So I'm at Suzannes and Mike's at work and Bob comes to our house and gives him k50,000, fires the guy and tells Sarah not to every let him back into the yard. Bob also did this because Bob has a gardner that has nothing to do now that we own the tools and Cindy has left for the U.S. and Bob has to pay him anyway, so he wants William to work for us until the end of the month. Sarah tells us this after I pick up Mike and we get back home. Sarah has tears in her eyes. She said that she tried to explain that the gardner meant k300,000 for a month! We all misunderstood each other. I felt so bad, but explained that he was the boss and we didn't feel we could do anything about it. I keep thinking about him and how I wish he would come by and I would tell him sorry and give him some more kwatcha just 'cause I feel so bad!!