Home Again!         - 30/10/2005      <--Prev : Next-->

It was so nice to be home again! Smiling faces at the airport, delightful customs officials doing their jobs in a most meticulous fashion.

My garden a beautiful guilty green oasis in the midst of water rationing, cheery taxi drivers and bus drivers did their best to annoy us and run us off the road, but nothing doing ... we were home again !!

The potholes were a bother but we managed not to strip a tyre on the way home and smilingly handed our bags to an even more smiling Charlie to be taken to the room for unpacking.

Oooooooohhhhh after a seventeen hour long haul flight plus two other flights of a couple of hours each - I thought longingly of my bath.

Now we have a daily ration of 400 litres which is hard to stretch out amidst a family of our vast proportions !! But we manage, because of that precious borehole ,albeit guiltily at the thought of our bosom buddies on Knob Hill who have had NO water at all for week after week.

But having been away for two weeks, we were now in CREDIT with our water consumption .... and so that bath was going to be full to the very brim, for the first time this summer !!

Hah !! a good dash of Radox Lavender Immersion Salts ... on with the radio, laid out the nice soft fluffy bath sheets ... and in the company of four family hounds who would not leave us for a second after our absence, turned on the tap of steaming hot water !!

Eeeekkkk !!! Out came this brown ghastly muck, litre after litre, gallon after gallon. I tried to let the bad stuff flow out but it kept coming and so I sadly gave up the thought of that foot deep steaming bath, and did the Zimbabwe equivalent !!

I took a shower where one cannot see the muck !!

The thought of drinking the darn stuff was anathema but hey, we found out if you add our delicious Mazoe orange juice, you can easily disguise the brown colour !! (And then there is always wine when all else fails !!)

The pile of trash that had gathered while we were away was not too bad as the Mayor himself had given instructions to the citizens to burn and bury what they could not collect !! And a run to the municipal dump is always good for the soul as it makes you realise just how lucky you really are.

You take your life in your hands trust me, lock the doors, make sure you don't go in a vehicle that cannot be jumped on and hung on by at least a dozen yelling young mad max scavengers who arrive in swarms to "assist" you with the removal of your trash.

These pitiful little people actually live in the dumps, they live off the scraps and build their homes from our waste products.

I will always remember what My Mom used to say

" I cried because I had no shoes, and then I saw one who had no feet "

NOTICES

Bulawayo Island Hospice Service are looking for 2 cell phones for our Srs - Sr Clark needs one as soon as possible as hers has been patched so many times with insulation tape and now finally the charging mechanism is about to go at anytime (Siemens C10). Sr Dube's is also showing signs of wear and tear and we fear that it will also pack up soon. Anyone got an 'easy to use' cell they would like to sell? Please contact Sr Clark 023 406917 or the office 77972. Thany you.

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