Another Saturday has come and gone and I didn’t get a nap. I guess napping is for the dead or something. Two other neighborhood girls, cousins of one of my regulars, wanted to come over today, so I told them to come at 10. At 9:15 they appeared. Why is it that when it comes to meetings, people have an up to 45 minute “grace period” to be late (that’s what my Dad would always call his tardiness – miss you Pops!), but when it comes to coming to my house, they show up any time they want, but it is almost always 45 minutes to an hour early?
Luckily I wasn’t doing something really inappropriate. That doesn’t happen anymore. Well, except for polishing off a large supply of cookies or something – if that can be called really inappropriate. So these girls wanted chocolate pudding and they got it. I also explained to them and had them draw a family tree. Given everyone is someone’s cousin, I wanted to see just how that really was possible. And golly gee, it was. When their cousin, one of my official Girls, showed up later, I had to admit to her that two of her cousins had been here earlier, and I showed her the family tree, just to make sure she approved.
I could tell that she would be giving her cousins a talking to about moving in on her turf, so I told her, “heh, they should be allowed to visit an old lady and get pudding every once and a while” and she laughed and realized at that moment that their coming to see me wouldn’t take anything from her visits. Sure, I will go broke faster, but she would still get what she gets, and they will get what they get.
I also taught them how to play Irish Sevens, and they loved it. We played the first game with all our cards out on the table so I could show them how to strategize and such. The next game the youngest, who is 11, wanted to lay them out again, and I told her she needed to hide them. So she and the other girl sorted their cards out on their chairs as they sat on a corner and played their cards that way. The young one missed a few plays, keeping us all in the dark as to why no one was playing a particular card, but that was right in line with someone her age trying to keep track of 17 cards in a newly learned game. She was so wired and happy about learning the game she couldn’t even sit down next to her cards half the time, but kept hopping about when she had a play.
I kicked them out at noon, did some laundry and prepared for the Girls at 3. Except they came at 2, right in the middle of me making myself lunch, so then I had to make them lunch, which I normally try to avoid just because they are growing girls and can eat a bit. I decided I would make them macaroni and cheese, with a real cheese sauce, and see if any of them would eat broccoli. Yeah, right. One agreed to try it and hated it, the other two wouldn’t even touch it. I simply steamed it with cheese sprinkled on it – not enough salt or other flavoring to motivate them. Two of the three liked the mac and cheese, so they got to split the third plate. They ate some of it, put the plates in the fridge and munched off them the rest of the visit. They will be back tomorrow to finish them off, so now I have two plates of homemade mac and cheese in my fridge that I am not allowed to touch! I think they also polished off another 500 mg of sugar.
I put them to work today, preparing business sized cards with World AIDS Day messages on each side for the district’s World AIDS day event that will be here in Otse on December 8th, while I am in Germany. I had the great idea to do this and haven’t seen the other members of the “decorating committee” since. So I made the templates, found the slightly heavier paper, and tried to get a printing to copy them for me two sided because our copier at work sucks. They wanted to charge me printer prices vs. the prices of copying, so I ended up at my trustee Pakistani shop owner near the hotel where my Rotary meets in Lobatse and he fed them,and then had his Motswana employee feed them, one by one into the machine. All 50 pages.
Then it was home to cut the 10 cards per page, punch a single hole in the corner of each card, cut ribbon and then sew the ribbon securely so it can be pinned with a safety pin to everyone who attends. We are making only 500 of these, minus the cutting and hole punching errors of the Girls, who I recruited to help me.
I am glad they are helping and I offered to pay them something, because I would never get it done without them. Not and keep my day job. We got ribbon on only half of them before running out, and only have sewed about 70 of them. They are willing to come back later this week if I can find more ribbon and thread. Really, a fun project my last week before going to Germany of vacation and while I am supposedly closing out this grant and writing the report, buying 5000 litre water tanks and office furniture and god knows what else. Oh yeah, a single wide trailer for one of the support groups. Maybe two. Knew I forgot something.
Meanwhile, Cathrine texted me and says she and Erto are going to come visit me today. After standing in front of someone else’s house texting me that she was at my gate (not), she finally finds her way here, with the help of one of the Girls who went out looking for her. She and Erto sit on the couch while the Girls continue their antics, which include playing my one Usher album on my computer over and over again. I have nothing else they like, sadly and not surprisingly. Erto will only eat something offered to him if he first throws part of it on the floor and then has his mom taste another portion of it. Perhaps he was a much hated King or Dictator in another life. He is enthralled by Pudi.
I pull out my juggling scarves to entertain him, and the girls took turns giving it a go. He also took turns with his mom throwing them on his head and him staring at Pudi. I got a video of it and he is quite cute. If I ever figure out how to post a video, you will think so too.
The Girls get a few more cards done, eat a few more bites of macaroni and I send them on their way. I do not pay them because I don’t want to do it in front of Cathrine. I have a feeling she has come to ask me for money and I really can’t do that. With Christmas coming, everyone wants to get something for their kids, and I guess she is hoping I can help her. We sit and chat a bit then I say I will walk her half way home so I can go get airtime.
Erto doesn’t like it much, but I carry him a bit of the way so she gets a break. He always waves at me so cutely and smiles so charmingly, dang it, he ought to allow me to carry him too. And so we practiced that and he eventually gave up trying to reach his mom and whining about it. Then he was all smiles and waves again once I turned him back over to her. I think we have enough money lined up to get his treatment started, we just need to coordinate the driver who has a busy life of her own and his accommodations in Johannesburg.
So with everyone out of my hair I come home to take a bath and relax a bit. Tomorrow I have a wedding to attend just down the road – the uh…lets see….nephew of one of the first people I met here who is a seamstress and married to an English guy. She is always quite friendly and kind. I took my Botswana skirt to her to take in a bit, and it came back feeling just as loose as before, but she put skirt hangy things in it and didn’t charge me. I suppose I could start to gain all this weight back so no point having it tight. I will wear it to the wedding and be quite the fashion plate.
Before all that though, I will read through what I have written for the grant final report. I have started and stopped it so many times that I know I have repeated myself throughout. I am glad I can write fiction as well as nonfiction. That’s all I am saying. The staff from the granting agency is coming on Wednesday to help me with the financial report. She wanted to also help me with the narrative. I told her what I needed was time to write it and have Richard add his information and then send it to them, I didn’t need her looking over my shoulder. (That reminds me, I taught people here two Americanisms this week – one was “nerve-racking” and the other was “breathing down my neck.” Gives you a sense of how my life is right now.)
Feedback will be welcome once they read it, but really, if they want to help me write it then just go ahead and write it for me please. I also told her I was doing fine on the financials, but at this point, we aren’t done spending the money, so my financial report won’t be complete, now will it? Unfortunately, because they can’t provide me with my already provided to them interim report as a page in an excel spread sheet that can tie to the final report, they think it’s okay for us all to simply input all those numbers again. There goes 4 or so hours. I don’t get that, but oh well.
It all makes me look forward to my trip to Germany on the 5th. My general plan for activities during my 10 day trip: do as little as possible. When I am done doing nothing I will obviously have to allow for some activities, such as waking up when I feel like it and without a cat paw in my face, taking naps when the mood strikes me, surfing the internet, walking around in cold weather looking at Christmas decorations and finding a Christmas Market where they sell mulled wine and warm sugar coated almonds. Maybe I’ll hit a couple of Rotary lunch time meetings that will be held in nice cozy German restaurants where I can eat schnitzel, sauerkraut, potatoes and drink beer by the stein-full. And then go home and take a nap, after which I will wake up, have a civilized coffee drinking session that includes pastry of all types, play with the kids a bit, then eat some great cheese and bread for dinner, have some nice wine and then go to bed again.
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