Cows Trample on my Garden and my Heart

As much as I enjoy posting happy and positive thoughts on this blog, I feel obligated to tell you about a truly, truly crappy morning I had last week.

First, I awoke to some disturbing news. My little friend, Innocent, is gone and he ain’t comin’ back. Apparently he, his mother and his four year-old sister, Florence, were only staying next door temporarily. It was never their real home. They’ve returned to their village near Lusaka. What a bummer. I was finally learning Tonga and getting along so well with them. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

Oh well, I thought. At least the other little guy, Junior, about 1 year-old, is still around with his mother. I’ll get to hang out with him now. So, in the morning before I went to work, I picked him up in my arms and spun him around a bit, something I do pretty often. I must have done too much spinning, because Junior pooped on my shirt.

I quickly re-showered, changed and headed on to work, saddened at being left behind in Siavonga and disgusted at being pooped on by Innocent’s replacement, but nonetheless ready to start my day.

Then I started to get sick. The weather is getting cooler now and a bunch of the staff members are getting colds. My throat started to hurt. A lot.

Oh well, I thought. Time to get to work and put it all behind me. At least work had been going well. Our fishermen had been rocking and rolling out at the Islands, the distant area where our team has been camping out for the last month and where the catches are higher than they are around here. I soon after got a call from Mubita, our fishing supervisor, that the weather was bad the night before and thus the catches were bad. And the metal rim around the net was broken, which, given our current financial struggles at Namumu, might be difficult to fix. Awesome.

Not long after I hung up the phone I heard some children screaming in the gardens right outside the office. “What’s all this ruckus?” I thought to myself. I ran outside to find out.

I stepped outside to find a group of cows absolutely ravishing our gardens. One of the men in the neighboring village either let his cows roam around unwatched or they had escaped from their pen. They had gotten through our fence and, in a few short minutes, had managed to wipe out an entire crop of okra and of rape, as well as to trample a number of nursery beds. Not a happy moment for Sam, not happy at all. For the second time during my stay I was filled with an almost uncontrollable rage directed at some of God’s creatures that may have been created by God but that I’m convinced were possessed by Satan himself (the first being the barking dogs).

It was funny in a way, until I thought back to the hours and hours and hours the boys and I had spent clearing the land, digging the beds and tending to the plants. Then it wasn’t funny anymore. It was just sad.

In an effort to defend what is ours I am having a few large knives crafted at the welding stand this week. Next time the cows try to make a move toward our crops we’ll be ready. No, I’m not joking.

Well, it feels good to get that all off my chest. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but if you think about the summary of that story and the fact that I got abandoned by my neighbors, pooped on, hit with a sore throat, suffered a major fishing setback and had my garden torn up in the span of about two hours I think you can begin to understand my despair. Ahhhhh. Deep breath, Sam.