What could I hope for in a day?

When so much goes exactly the opposite of how I hoped for in just one day that it’s almost comical…

8:30 AM: I have a beautiful breakfast of omelettes ready by 8:45 am for the 8:30 am meeting I had scheduled with a HEAL Africa coworker. She arrives more than 45 minutes later, the eggs cold and my stomach growling rudely. I listen to her in-depth explanation as to why she thinks she got poisoned a couple days ago via a handshake and is going through intense traditional healing and therefore can’t eat the eggs I had made. She tells me that after she finishes the traditional medicine, she will take the malaria medicine that she tested positive for at the hospital, maybe in a week or two. I am baffled, at a loss of words, not sure how to respond as she seems to be neither poisoned or nor sick with malaria. After we eat, I ask if we can finally look at her laptop to work on the budget and projections. Her laptop is out of battery, and as usual, we have none at home during the day, so we head back to the office. The whole morning is gone before I’ve done one productive thing.

10:42 AM I drive our little Suzuki, which is as dependably non-dependable as the roads I drive on and the country I live in. The axel has worsened to the point where the car keeps going straight even after I’ve turned the wheel 360 degrees. It finally catches and my heart sinks as it veers suddenly onto the oncoming traffic, motos zipping past us. I turn the wheel another 360 degrees in record time, correcting it just in time … survived another day!

4:38 PM While the Suzuki is in the shop that afternoon getting fixed, I take a freshly repaired Nissan van to rush to the border to pick up a guest. As I park it, it dies due to an electric shortage and a dead battery, smoke billowing. Dang, now that I’ve finally learned how to drive stick shift on these Goma roads, the car dies on me in front of everyone at the border! I call our mechanic and watch, horrified as 12 men are eagerly sticking their hands under the hood, sparks flying everywhere, tools unheard of pounding on the battery. As the whole population surrounding us watches, I kindly decline marriage proposals offering 15 goats (not a bad dowry!) and promises of a bigger, better car I could drive in, should I accept their propositions. Jean Pierre finally arrives on a moto and fixes it with a broken piece of a rusted nail that he pounded into the battery. The car runs again, it seems, as I make my way back to the hospital.

5:41 PM I drive many people home in that Nissan less than an hour later, looking forward to playing basketball at a friend’s house to release the stress. Yet when I try turning on the car again after changing, it is fully lifeless. Lifeless as in not even the electrical lights will turn on, dead. I slowly bang my head against the steering wheel a few times, trying to collect myself in front of a guest, praying for sanity… can not one thing work as I would hope for today? Such seems to be my lot these days!

6:25 PM I trudge back to the new room I just moved into after Harper left me (what seems like months ago already, even though it’s been less than a week). The light switch won’t work. Sigh, I’m too tired to even get worked up about this. I go to the bathroom to find that my toilet that was running non-stop this morning before I shut it all off still doesn’t work. Really, what can one say besides finding it sort of, in a twisted way, amusing? Has it really only been one day?