Eventful Week

So here are some highlights of my week was since my last post.

I called American Express again, to express my frustration that they had temporarily blocked my account, again. I immediately regretted my annoyance when I realized that this time someone had indeed made a fraudulent charge on my account. Evidently someone had stolen my credit card number on the internet and bought themselves a nice new HP computer, to the tune of over $800. AMEX didn't charge my card, thankfully, and promised to send me a replacement one ASAP.

I went to my weekly Portuguese class and tried to convince my teacher that I should stop taking lessons, to let a newer person have my coveted time slot with her. I said that my brain was full and could no longer receive any more new information.

M. is by far the better of the two teachers we have available to us, and a teaching time with her is very hard to get. But instead, M. convinced me to stick it out longer, at least until I finish my textbook. I've got three chapters to go. Which at my current rate of learning should last me until we leave here a year from now.

I went grocery shopping on fumigation day, which is the quarterly pest control treatment of all the houses in the compound. My big find was digestive biscuits (similar to graham crackers) in individual packets.

The girls and I went to Chicken Fried Steak night at the nearby hotel. Mark was still at work and Kyle was at his tennis lesson so it was girls' night out. We introduced a new family to this treat - they had just moved to our compound from Houston and have two girls that are the same age as Kyle and Sarah. I had a stomachache when I got home and then remembered why it had been so long since my last visit.

I organized a teaching schedule for Sunday School and prepared a lesson for Sunday. I'm still waiting on the curriculum that I had ordered, so Mark and I had to come up with our own.

I made homemade bread, ice cream, and blueberry muffins. Not on the same day.

I exchanged my American dollars for Angolan kwanzas before I picked up a few more groceries. Normally this is an uneventful exchange, but not this time. At the entrance of my neighborhood hole-in-the-wall grocery store there is a row of ladies sitting in plastic chairs waving currency and shouting "amiga!" Which is the signal for "please come to me to exchange your US dollars for kwanzas, you know you can't use dollars to buy anything once inside the store."

This time the row consisted of three ladies all waving currency. I needed to exchange $300 (a ridiculous amount of money for a few groceries, I know). I simply handed my money to the lady nearest me, and a then witnessed a very ugly altercation. The lady next to her started to grab some of the money, but the first lady yelled at her and pulled away. The angered lady again grabbed at the money, and words flew fast and furious. I was stunned, and just hoped that I wouldn't get ripped off.

When the ladies settled down and handed my my kwanzas, I hurried inside the store without counting it. I didn't care if they stiffed me or not by that point. Evidently I should have divided my money and given some of it to each of the three ladies, so that they would all have some. (Somehow they make a small profit from exchanging money.) When I did recover enough to count my money, I realized that the lady was honest and actually gave me a good exchange rate. So no harm was done. At least to me.

On Saturday, I served as a small group leader at our church's second annual women's retreat. Nearly ninety women attended. Like last year, it was held in the recreation center of our compound, which makes it very convenient for me to attend. And, like last year, I was blessed and humbled by the experience. Not only was I the only American at my table, I was the only white person at my table. The rest of the ladies were from Nigeria, Kenya, and Angola. And out of the eight of us, five were single mothers.

These women were so amazing. We sang together, prayed together, read Bible verses together, ate together, and shared our needs. One woman wanted prayer to be able to conceive a second child, one woman wanted her family to be restored, and one woman just wanted to hold onto her job. I had the privilege of explaining to them the delicacy of whipped cream, they had no idea what it was. And one unfortunate woman took a big hunk of cheese, bit into it, and then discovered that it was butter.

Now for the real highlight. Yesterday while reorganizing my pantry I spotted the most awful thing on the floor, in the back corner where I had pulled out some cartons of milk to move them to another spot. Something small, and furry, and most decidedly dead. With a sinking feeling I knew that our mouse had definitely partaken of the poison that was put out in my kitchen and garage.

When I went to inform Mark, he was just as horrified as I was about the prospect of getting rid of it. Why did I have to get the urge to clean and reorganize on a Sunday, when Teresa wasn't there? Because if this had happened during the week, I could have called for Teresa to come and take care of it, and bless her heart, she would have. Without flinching. At all. She knows what wimps we Americans are.

But no, Teresa was not available. I tried to move it with an old broom that I found outside in the yard, but it didn't budge. It was wedged back in the corner and was starting to smell. Then Mark had the brilliant idea of calling the landlord about it. So I did, and he sent two men to come and retrieve the poor thing.

In order not to end this post on such a hideous note, here's a picture of the bananas growing outside my kitchen window. Looks like I'll be making lots of banana bread soon.

Amelia Bedelia Is Gone

Remember the series of children's books about Amelia Bedelia, the hapless housekeeper who created one disaster after another? That was my experience with my substitute maid, whom I'll just refer to as Amelia Bedelia.

Here's the story. My wonderful, efficient, effective and very hard-working maid, Teresa, recently took a well-deserved vacation for a few weeks (her vacation started sometime while we were on our last vacation). Before we left on our trip, Teresa had spent three or four days training Amelia Bedelia on how to clean the house, do the laundry, and otherwise maintain order in our home. Not an easy task in a busy household of five. Teresa mangaged it with ease. Poor Amelia Bedelia didn't.

When we arrived back home after our trip, Teresa was gone and Amelia Bedelia was in her place. She seemed at a loss as to what to do first, so I asked her to please help Kate unpack her suitcase. That turned out to be a mistake. Kate and Sarah share a room and Sarah had been in the middle of unpacking when she left the room for a few minutes. When she came back to her room, her suitcase was emptied. Amelia Bedelia had unpacked her things and put them God only knows where. Sarah screamed.

That was about the time that I discovered that all the numbers were missing on the temperature dial of my oven. I thought maybe Teresa had been overzealous in her cleaning, but then realized that it must have been Amelia Bedelia, who, poor thing, is illiterate and didn't realize that she shouldn't scrub the numbers off.

On to the laundry. I made the swift decision that I would do all the laundry myself (except for the ironing - I avoid that like the plague) because we had already discovered that Kyle had my clothes in his closet, I had Sarah's, Sarah had Kate's, and so on. So I was back on laundry duty after being spoiled by Teresa's doing it all this time.

In the kitchen, Amelia Bedelia put dishes, cookware, etc. wherever she felt like it, not necessarily where they items belong. Every time I went to cook I had to open all the cabinets and drawers to find utensils and pots and pans.

In the rest of the house, Amelia Bedelia didn't like anything to be visible on table tops or dressers, so she would rearrange everything (i.e hide things from view). We still haven't found the coasters that were on the coffee table. And just today I found my top bed sheet, it's been missing for a week.

As far as the ironing, Amelia Bedelia is probably the only person on the planet who irons worse than I do. Today Teresa brought down several of Mark's work shirts and said that she would re-iron them. She is a godsend.

Amelia Bedelia hated the vacuum. When I saw her sweeping the carpet with a broom, I asked her nicely to please use the vacuum cleaner. She wasn't too thrilled, but she complied. I don't think she ever took the vacuum upstairs.

In all fairness, Amelia Bedelia is a fairly new maid and hasn't had the years of experience that Teresa has under her belt. But I think she also has a few screws loose. My neighbor had her once, as a replacement maid. Her oldest daughter locked her bedroom door so that she couldn't get in there.

Teresa is getting a nice big raise.

A Good Day

So after that last complaint-filled post, here's a positive one. Teresa is now back from her extended vacation, through some small miracle I won a tennis tournament , I found Brown Bread Flour at the grocery store, and I successfully trimmed my own bangs. Good things indeed.

Frustration

I should have known that today was going to be frustrating when I sat down to do my Bible study homework early this morning and one of the things I realized that I need to work on was not getting easily frustrated. Which is very hard for me to do in the United States. But in Africa, it is multiplied a hundred fold. Take today, for example.

My plan was to catch up on some blogging, as I normally try to do on Mondays. Mondays are the day that I have a few minutes of extra time in my day that I like to allocate to my blog. But today the kids didn't have school (due to another Angolan holiday), so it didn't quite work out.

I wanted to blog about our trip, my visit to my sister's back in November, etc. Then I was going to sit down and plan menus for the week. I ended up taking about an hour convincing the water company bill collector that no, I did not owe them over $400, that I had paid all of my monthly bills on time. In broken Portuguese (me) and broken English (him) we finally reached that conclusion.

Then I proceeded to yell at my kids for strewing toys all over the living room and for leaving dirty dishes and food strewn all over the kitchen while I was having my discussion with the water company guy. And I was irritated with my replacement maid, who puts everything in the wrong places time after time, even when I put things back where they belong. Finding anything in my kitchen is now a game of hide and seek. I don't even let her near the laundry. (I was disappointed to find out this morning that Teresa, my regular, wonderful, fantastic maid is still on vacation, even after I was told that she would return today.)

I then had to cancel Sarah's hair appointment, because there was no way we were going to be able to make it in time. She is in dire need of a hair cut, but it will have to wait.

Next I called American Express and asked them not to block our credit card, that yes, we really do travel in Africa and no, those are not fradulent charges. Our travel agent was unable to book our airline tickets for our upcoming trip to Victoria Falls and Namibia because AMEX thought it was suspicious activity.

After that very frustrating morning I threatened my children, grabbed a late lunch and went to my room for twenty minutes of peace.

When I came downstairs all the children had vanished. So I decided to call a friend in Houston and catch up. While multi-tasking by talking on the phone and making bread and banana bread at the same time, I saw a mouse scurry across my kitchen floor. This was no surprise, because I saw the same one last week (I hope it was the same one) and asked for someone to please come and put poison or traps or something in my house to catch the stupid thing. This was also no surprise because we saw this mouse - actually a guest in my house saw it and reported it to me -before I went to Houston in November, for goodness' sake. They were supposed to have put out poison while we were on vacation in December/January, but I highly suspect that this wasn't done. I think I'm feeding my cat too much.

So today I had complaining, uncooperative children, a clueless maid and a mouse wandering around my house, a credit card company and a Portuguese-speaking bill collector to deal with. Sometimes when I think about being here another year I want to scream.

Vacation Pictures on Facebook

I loaded some pictures on Facebook today, now that I have the internet back. God, please let it stay!

I will post some pics on my blog too, and write a bit more about them later. The majority of the trip pics will be on Facebook, though, because it so much easier to upload them there.

Snowy Day

On our way to Barcelona we had a layover in Munich, Germany. The kids were thrilled to see snow there, and we bundled them up the best that we could so that they could go outside and play for a few minutes. They had a blast.

This was the first time Kate had ever experienced playing in the snow. We saw some flakes Paris when we were there last winter, but it didn't last, and it certainly wasn't enough to play in.

Kate had been begging to see snow in recent months, so this was thrilling for her. For all of us really. When you rarely see the white stuff, it's pretty exciting.

Rainy Day

It's a rainy day here today, which is unusual, as it rarely rains here. This morning around 5:00 am we were all awakened by not only rain, but an even more rare occurrence - a thunderstorm.

Now, being from Texas, I am quite used to thunderstorms, but I can only think two or three other times that there have been thunderstorms here in Luanda in the nearly three years that we've lived here. It just hardly even rains, even in the rainy season. And to have a thunderstorm that lasts for hours, that is highly unusual.

The ironic thing about the rain is that although it is desperately needed in this very dry place, it makes everyone's lives more difficult, especially the for the Angolans. None of the maids or gardeners who work in the compound came to work today. The majority of them travel by taxi (those horrible blue and white Toyota minivans that are stuffed with people and manned by maniacal drivers). Because the main roads are always congested, the taxis normally take the side streets through the barrios, which they can't do when it rains because the streets flood very easily. So, not many taxis will be operating today. The Angolans can't walk to work because a) it's too far, and b) the streets are flooded. They don't even try to get to work when there are heavy rains.

And their homes flood easily because the floors of their houses are made of clay, which doesn't absorb water. So instead of going to work they stay at home and bail water out of their houses and try to salvage their belongings. Last time it rained like this, Teresa told me that her house was flooded and everything inside was ruined.

Rain, rain, go away.