Today was my first day back to work since my trip to the States and my Dad’s death. I didn’t make it to work, as it turned out. While Sunday night found me going to bed late (1:30 a.m.) and sleeping straight til about 10 a.m., last night didn’t go so well. Bed by 10, awake at 3:30 and for a multitude of reasons my usual ability to go right back to sleep was thwarted. After 30 minutes, I got up and decided to watch a couple of Glee shows. Not thinking it would put me to sleep but needing something, well, “gleeful.” Better than another episode of Dexter.
By 5 a.m. I decided to try bed again, and took one of the “sleep betta” pills given to me by Ngaka Tanaka (Ngaka is Doctor in Setswana – pronounce it like Nahka and it’s a nice little rhyming thing) for the flights. He was very concerned that I didn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time on the plane, for circulatory reasons, so for some stupid reason I surmised that these pills must be lightweight and maybe even had some alarm, or muscle cramping mechanism, that would wake me up in two hours. Instead, I woke up at 12:30, just in time for lunch, with no cramping. Hell, they didn’t work that well on the plane, but I guess being horizontal makes a big difference.
I got up, in a fog, ate breakfast for lunch (to make up for the lunch I had for breakfast on the plane back) and made my way to the bus to shop in Lobatse. Everything feels surreal and different. For one, it is warmer. For two, there are more bugs out and about. Spring is springing to life. My kitchen sink had a row of ants lined up to drink from the trough in the bowl I left soaking overnight. Eish, guess I have to do my dishes every night, and right after every meal, until they figure out they aren’t welcome. Strange thing is, these ants are a bit bigger than the ones that surround the cat’s food bowl, but aren’t as big as the ones that really creep me out. Eskimos have 100s of words for snow, I am hoping there aren’t hundreds of words for insect sizes here….
For three, (yeah, if someone decided to say, “for one”, there must have been an expectation in aforesaid someone’s mind to continue it and not just lazily go the “secondly” route). Oh yeah, where was I? For three, all the prices have gone up in the last two weeks here. Bus fares went up 30 tshebe, regardless of the distance. So going 15 km is 30 tshebe more expensive. Going all the way to Gaborone, more than twice as far, also went up only 30 tshebe from Otse. Sadly, they could have used this fare increase to rectify a ridiculous situation and they didn’t. Instead of changing all the fairs to round off to the nearest Pula or half pula, they still have 4.90 or 8.70, 9.20 or most stupidly 10.10 as fares.
No big deal? Well, this is how we pay fares. You get on the bus and grab a seat. You sit there until the man, or woman with the receipt book and bag of change comes along. You tell him/her where you are going and pay. A receipt is written, your money taken and then it’s time to dig around in their bag o’change to find your odd tshebe. If it’s the one woman I seem to get all the time, this is done with lots of moaning and groaning and digging. She is also a true Motswana, of proper size, so if anyone is trying to get past her in the aisle while she is trying to work, it gets even more difficult for her to concentrate on that 5 tshebe piece she is digging for.
Up until today’s ride, she also used to always wait to start collecting fares until we had left Lobatse town limits. This meant that depending on where all of us from Otse were seated on the bus, she had no chance in hell of collecting our money before the first Otse stop. For this we were all soundly chastised. If she did get to us early, and we had 100 Pula notes (about 15 bucks), we were in big trouble because she wouldn’t have change, other than in 10 tshebe coins, which at 100 tshebe per pula, could be quite an ordeal. But today, she started to collect fares immediately and relatively efficiently, I had the correct change and was up front in the bus. Yabadabadoo!
This woman struggles so, more than others I have seen that I daydream about finding her one of those conductor change machines that used to exist in America back when we had conductors. I would buy one for her if I could find one. It all could be so much easier if the fares had been rounded off to the closest pula at this last increase. Which often is what they do anyway if they can’t find the 5 or 10 tshebe piece to give us in that “bagopula.” I figure I have already paid for a Lobatse to Otse trip in all the change I didn’t get back. And the taxi fares all went up too, again, from 3.50 to 3.90. My taxi today told me he “owed me” the 10 tshebe. Just make it 4 PLEASE, no one is being fooled. I feel for these folks though, gas prices went up, there are too many competing taxis (unless you are in Otse, where there are no officially marked taxis that I have seen yet), combis and buses and 3.50 (or even 4) is still around 50-60 cents USD.
At the grocery, prices were up too. But that didn’t stop me from filling my backpack and purple bag, per usual. Except for whatever reason I spent 400 pula instead of my usual 200 to 300. Was it the olive oil? Or the ant poison? Whatever it was, pound for pound I think I got my money’s worth, or just two weeks has put me grossly out of practice with carrying heavy bags. You’d think moving the million collective pounds of my mother’s possessions during my time in the States would have kept me in shape? Maybe the “sleep betta” pill is the culprit.
And for four, knowing someone is going to die isn’t the same as after they actually have died. This is the number one surreal maker. I don’t know how people just keep acting the same after a parent dies. I want to act the same, really I do. And I know everyone around me would certainly appreciate it if I do. And I know I probably will, once this jet lag thing is confounding things. I have no idea if this is really true.
I ran into my landlord’s son, Lentswe, on the bus home. (He was on his way to work as a night security guard at the nearby game reserve, where the animals are less dangerous than the people who come at night looking for food.) He checked on my cats for me while I was gone. He told me he was sorry to hear about my dad but was glad I was back. Sweet. He also told me that John, Camphill’s former pottery supervisor from Zimbabwe had died as well. John had left his position early in August and was planning to go back home. No one said anything, but looking at his emaciated body, I knew he was sick and dying. He hadn’t been around work much his last couple of months, so I hadn’t gotten much time to get to know him, but we did talk one day and he was a wise and gentle soul who knew his time on earth was short.
I am not good at guessing ages, and John’s gauntness made him look older, I am sure, but there is no way he was older than 50. He didn’t make it back to his homeland before he passed. Lentswe said John died in Botswana, but his body was going home to Zimbabwe, and added, “what a terrible thing, to not die in your own country.”
I am thinking, what a terrible thing to die so young and how blessed and fortunate I have been to have a father who was able to see so many things in his life, a wonderful career, mostly great kids, all awesome grandchildren and a loving and patient wife. In his last years, he had great access to medical care and medication, a comfortable bed and place to live and then, finally hospice, which included a very special nurse who was so kind to him. He had his faith which sustained him and if this faith was justified, he has already been welcomed home. I should be celebrating our fortune.
My friend Nancy gave me a refrigerator magnet that says, “go slow: life is progress.” Yep. Tomorrow I plan to go slow all the way to my office.
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