So I cried over some cucumber

Anri, after being flung to the floor by a desk

Anri-Louise once again adds to the humour and cringe-worthiness of my blog...

There are bad weeks; there are positively horrid weeks; and then there are weeks like I’ve just endured. (This is more or less where I picture you, the reader, nodding with understanding and a sympathetic grin.) Rob has introduced me to you as the KLUTZ, but the past few weeks supersede all.

It all started with a drive to the doctor for a painful “belly”, as my school kids would call it, only to return with four separate, totally unrelated diagnoses – all needing treatment. The first set of antibiotics added an allergic reaction to the list and so it was back to the doctor again, an excursion taking a minimum of three hours through the hustle, bustle and fumes of Tana. The second set of treatment was more readily accepted by my body, but did less than nothing to the germs, and so I returned once again for visit number three. (Kim has suggested I return to South Africa for general maintenance – like a used car...)

I am okay, I tell myself, lying in the dark – the electric cables to my house having been stolen, and the month’s meat supply in a bloody mess in the bin. It is not so bad that the guard filled my new containers set aside for bed linen with soil for his gardening project. Serving burnt rice to my Church homegroup, I can also deal with. I am okay. I AM okay. I am OKAY.

But as we all know, when it rains it pours, and right now it seems to be raining “cows and pigs” (one of my little girls' cute quotes). I survived the school bathrooms when antibiotic number four again had my system rebelling. I laughed at the unbelief on Rob’s face when I toothpicked my filling out in the lunch room. I watched in a mirror as the dentist took 90 minutes to replace the filling using makeshift tools but saved me from a threatening abscess on the other side of my jaw. I apologised for breaking Kim’s louver window while trying to close it and for getting angry with Rob for absolutely no reason (that he could see). I lived through my cellphone staying behind in a taxi, never to be seen or heard from again. And then this morning I sat on the only broken desk in the entire grade 5 class and was catapulted to the floor in a heap.

But in the end it was a simple piece of cucumber that broke the camel’s back... I was eating salad at Sue’s; the cucumber fell to the floor (in slow motion), setting off a chain reaction only women would understand. Both men immediately fled the scene.

After a few bucketloads of tears I am telling myself once again that I am okay – mostly because of a tattooed smoker at the Three Horses Beer (THB) bar. Heading home from church he stopped me to take a picture of him with his friends... and then paid me for the job – all of $0.50! I laughed all the way home. I, a vazaha (foreigner), have just been paid 1000 Ariary to take a photo at a bar. Sure. God is still in control. And He will provide. Finances. Health. Some good luck. And laughter!