I’m going mad. Literally. It’s 3.30am and I’m preparing this e-mail for you guys. Why am I up at 3.30? Well, for the last 9 hours I have had some crazy woman laughing, ranting and singing at me outside my house and shouting ‘muzungu’ a lot. Loudly. She even tried to get into my house. So what have I done about it? Unable to call on the local police, or anyone else for that matter, I lay in bed pondering various courses of action. At 11.00 I went out and started shouting at her and then chased her through the mud. I was unprepared, being a bare footed muzungu in the pitch black, so I returned to the house. Between 11.30 and 12.00 I emptied two buckets and a washing up bowl of water over her. This appeared to have worked. There was silence broken only by occasional sneezing for the next hour.
But then she resumed her craziness. So half an hour ago, after deliberating over a range of unconventional strategies, I decided that I’d try to catch her and tie her to the football goal post where she could stay until the morning when I could find the village elders to deal with her. With my trainers on, some material to shove in her gob, some rope to tie her arms up and a torch I went after her. To her credit she doesn’t half have some stamina. I have chased her around my flipping house several times which she found highly amusing, and then across the vegetable fields around my house. She managed to evade me and disappeared into the night so I came home to wait for her return.
It’s 4.37, the latest rain storm has past and psycho woman has started again. I was genuinely close to lynching her, woman or not, cultural sensitivity or not. The human mind and character is a fragile thing. By sunrise though she'd gone. Once I'd caught up on a little sleep I sent out the house boy to ask questions around the village and find out who on earth it was and why she was ranting outside my house all night. But it was fruitless. It might as well have been just in my mind...
But then she resumed her craziness. So half an hour ago, after deliberating over a range of unconventional strategies, I decided that I’d try to catch her and tie her to the football goal post where she could stay until the morning when I could find the village elders to deal with her. With my trainers on, some material to shove in her gob, some rope to tie her arms up and a torch I went after her. To her credit she doesn’t half have some stamina. I have chased her around my flipping house several times which she found highly amusing, and then across the vegetable fields around my house. She managed to evade me and disappeared into the night so I came home to wait for her return.
It’s 4.37, the latest rain storm has past and psycho woman has started again. I was genuinely close to lynching her, woman or not, cultural sensitivity or not. The human mind and character is a fragile thing. By sunrise though she'd gone. Once I'd caught up on a little sleep I sent out the house boy to ask questions around the village and find out who on earth it was and why she was ranting outside my house all night. But it was fruitless. It might as well have been just in my mind...
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