Time management among the poor

July 2010
This has been one of those 12 hour stints that merits a writing.
It started with my commitment to bring Esstnut to a drop off place to catch a ride at 3 AM to Zimbabwe. I hadn’t planned on taking Enes to the hospital the night before but I did. She was very sick again, so a trip to the hospital began the 12 hours. We stayed at the hospital from 6PM to 10:30 waiting for blood tests and getting proper meds. We were very grateful not to have another stay in the hospital. After getting home at about 11, I managed to grab a couple hours of sleep before the alarm woke me for my next trip to Beira to fetch Essnut. When I went to the van I found my guard sleeping soundly in the back seat. (I will deal with that one later)
As I turned the corner to Essnut’s place I found a sea of mud. Usually it’s dry to a certain place and then I wait for her to come to me. Sometimes the water is shallow and because I have never had a problem there before I made a go for it; big mistake. I did manage to get to a little island in the middle of it but turning around proved to be impossible and we were stuck in the mud. Dauce was with me and told me that he thought I was on the wrong road and that really goofed me up. Then Essnut came and settled that I was in the right place and she had never seen it this way either. I guess a water main broke and made a big mess. So here I am rocking back and forth surrounded by mud and little cement and mud houses making quite a ruckus. The police came and kept watch so no banditos would take advantage of us while Essnut went for some help. Now it is about 3AM and the only people brave enough to come out of their homes are banditos and police, well… then there’s me just trying to help my sister. Essnut managed to get 3 men to come if only she would pay them 100mts which is equal to 3US (that would be one dollar a person ). Yes I will pay! We got out and then the police asked for their share for doing their duty. I did give them 1.50USD and they were not very happy but understanding anyway. Evidently there are too many banditos in that area and that was the reason I was there to pick up Essnut anyway.
We made it to the drop off house and found them not quite ready so we waited in the van for a bit longer. By the time Dauce and I made it home the roosters were already announcing the arrival of a new day, even though it was still very dark. On my way through the girl’s yard I found my other guard sprawled out, sound asleep on a chair. (I will deal with that one later, too) I went to bed around 4:30 exhausted. I woke at around 8 with yet another trip to take to Beira. The only thing that got me up was knowing that the next day was Sabbath and I do take it seriously.
Every Friday morning I take Laz and Davi to their Special Ed class and while they are there some boys do the weekly shopping at the market. I had to drag myself to the van with a few “mama, I need this and thats” along the way. When I got to the van I found a neighbor there asking me to take him and his very sick daughter to the hospital. Last month I did the same thing for another one of his daughters and she died the same day. They both had AIDS. No problem, I go right past it on my way to my other destinations. I put him in the van and told him there would be no time for baths or any preparation because we were late getting to the class for Davi. We got to his place to find everyone still sitting around and no one really prepared to do anything except wash up and eat. He hadn’t told anyone to prepare or that he was even asking me to help. I waited for a bit and then realized that this could go on for an hour and Davi would miss his class. I am laughing right now to think that most of the time raising my children in the US I lived in this time crunch, piecing events together like a puzzle and if they didn’t fit being very stressed out. I told him that I couldn’t take him but would help him get her there by chapa. It amazed me that they would rather carry her a quarter kilometer and struggle on and off the chapa instead of rush out the door taking advantage of this good deal. I was truly amazed. “What! We don’t have time to wash our faces!” Washing faces is always attached to other prep things and can go on for a long time.
So I looked into my heart after all this exchange of communication and driving away without this dying lady in the van and wondered where I was and who I was. Is my heart hard? Did they think I was crazy living like a rushed westerner here among the poor? Well, I was grumpy… I hadn’t slept well… Do they understand such things? Maybe I was teaching them a good lesson…