Trash Day, President Marries 5th wife and Flat Tire- January 4 & 5

Mondays are trash days in this area. You have to put the trash out in the morning so that dogs and people don’t dig through it. Despite putting it out a few minutes before the truck was due to pick it up, there were people already digging through the trash outside the gate. It is very sad. And as I drove to work I saw little kids on the streets digging through trash.

The security company came and showed me how to work the alarm on the house. At night, I can set it and if any of the zones have movement the alarm will go off. The back part of the house and kitchen where we sleep is fine to move around in. It is all pretty complicated trying to remember all the details of arming and disarming the system.

South Africa’s president Zuma married today taking in his 5th wife. One committed suicide in 2000 so now he has 4 wives. In Zulu tradition this is okay. He has 19 kids mostly with these wives but some are not with the wives.

We spent an hour and a half at the telephone office just getting the phone number transferred to my name. The girls were getting stir crazy. There was this elderly woman who was sitting by us and kept talking to Sienna. Apparently she had bad breath because Sienna kept covering her nose and would not look at the lady. And the lady kept wanting to pray with us.

I have found someone to watch the girls until school starts on the 20th. She starts on Tuesday. Her name is Tammy. She is an au pair and loves kids.

I had to stay at the office a little later because of a teleconference with the board chair in the US. And as we were driving home I hit a pothole in the road and had a flat tire. Luckily we were about ½ mile from the house so I just kept driving. I figured I would drive until I couldn’t drive anymore. But we made it. It was rainy and chilly. We got to the house and apparently the alarm had been activated earlier and the security company had come to check things out. They left a note on the gate. So, I didn’t go inside the house but called them to come back and go in the house to make sure things were okay. It took them about 10 minutes to get there and me and the girls were outside the house in the rain. Sienna and Sofia were asking a million questions as to why we weren’t going in, why we had a flat, etc.

Two armed patrolmen came and went into the house. Everything was okay. They said that it is very common that a gecko will set off the alarm. There is a motion sensor in the living room of the house. And this is exactly where there are a couple of geckos. They run around on the wall near it. I just hope they don’t do this in the middle of the night and set off the alarm, it will scare me to death!

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Tammy watched the girls today. They really like her. She is around 24 years old. She is very sweet. She said it was a pleasure to watch them and they didn’t give her any trouble. I can’t believe these are the same girls I have spent the past 3 weeks nonstop with! I am sure they were happy to have a break from going and sitting in utility offices and buying furniture. Sofia said Tammy was her best friend.

Sofia talks all the time about Billy Ray Cyrus. She said she wants him to come and visit her in Africa with Michael Jackson. She said that Michael Jackson and Billy Ray Cyrus are twins but they don’t look alike. She has little crushes on both of them.

It was cool and cloudy here today- we all had long sleeve shirts on. I had to hang my wash in the garage to dry again. It will take 3 days to dry. Not having a dryer is not as bad as I thought it would be.

The girls are eating much better nowadays. When we first got here they didn’t want to eat hardly. Now they eat all the time. Sofia eats about 3 bananas a day. Sienna eats an apple or two. I bought some fresh papayas (pawpaws) and mango today for them to try.