Bah! Some days I'm not sure whether to laugh, cry, or be really angry. Mostly, I try to laugh at the situation because if I get angry all the time, I would get burned out really quickly (and also be no fun to hang out with).
So yesterday (Oct 18th), I came back from market, and needed to start cooking pumpkin for supper. A little while into my supper preparation, I heard our neighbor boys fighting outside our house. This is nothing out of the ordinary, but they had been especially mischievous today, so I decided to go out to see what they were fighting about. There were three of them there who wanted to take a bath, but they could only find two of our wash basins. It's fine that they take baths at our house because they don't get baths with soap at their own house. I am very glad that I was blissfully unaware that this was not their first shower of the day, but their 2nd or 3rd (or 4th)... because of what transpired next.
As I marched outside to discipline whoever was in the wrong, I noticed that they were fighting over my basin. The basin that, just 20 minutes earlier, held my clothes that I was in the middle of washing.
I must pause my story to tell you that ALL my clothes are in the wash. ALL of them. And they've been in the water for 2 days now because of the chor (funeral). {See previous post.} I have been spending all my time over at my friends' house, caring for their needs, etc, and doing other "household" chores (like, for example, going to market), and trying to keep up with my farm work. My wash just keeps getting neglected. Also, I must tell you that I do my laundry on the back veranda where no one can see me (and ask for me to give them every single article of clothing I pull out of the water) AND where the neighbor kids are not allowed to go.
Okay, so if the neighbor boy is in my basin, where are my clothes? I raced to the back veranda, only to find that my clothes had been dumped. The clothes that I was so closed to be finished washing... dumped out for me to start the process all over. Bah!
I went racing out to the front yard where the boys were taking their baths, a stream of Creole flowing out of my mouth. "What did you think you were doing?" "In what world is it okay to take someone else's clothes (that they are in the middle of washing) out of the basin and use the basin to bathe yourself?!?" "You didn't ask me if you could have it - you didn't even ask if you could go on the back veranda for that matter!" Oh, I could have smacked their bare little bottoms!
Those three little stinkers lounged in their little tubs like naked little kings and laughed at my rampage. After I was all out of steam, I marched inside the house, shut the door, and had a good laugh myself.
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