Murphy's Law

EVER FEEL A BIT LIKE THIS?

In one of my recent twitters, I asked why it was that every time we have overnight guests, the power AND the water goes out. A friend of me wrote and said it must have something to do with that man named Murphy.

Now while I don't believe in bad luck, I haven't found a way to avoid having one of those days now and again. And today as been just that.

Scott left for Maputo yesterday morning to run several errands, one being working on the finalization of our paperwork so we can stay in the country. Now Maputo is a long, six hour trip on bad roads, so we try not to go often. Which also means we cram in a lot in the short time we are there.

So while he was preparing for meetings and working on paperwork, my day began with Mariah waking up early with a high fever and a sore neck. Immediately, I was worried she had malaria. I got out the home testing kit, prepared her for that dreaded prick, and got everything ready. After one flying needle--don't ask--I finally finished the blood test. It was negative, so I gave her some fever medicine and sent her to bed, promising I'd go out and buy her Sprite.

Gabe ran into town with me. We found two Sprites at the second kiosk we checked, then went to the bread shop to see if they had another one. I sent Gabe inside to buy the sprite and bag of chips for lunch, which he did. Now chips are normally hard to find here, but sometimes I can buy a small bag for about a dollar. But apparently, Gabe doesn't know what the exchange rate is, because he bought a five dollar can of Pringles! While he was thrilled with his find, I told him that those chips were worth their weight in gold, and would be rationed out for the next week.

In the meantime, Scott called me from Maputo. Our contact had lost some of the paperwork we needed to file with the government. An hour later he called me again. Someone else had stolen both rearview mirrors of the car.

It was already turning out to be "one of those days" for both of us and the morning wasn't even over yet.

Now, if you're lucky, you can find the parts you need at the "stolen goods" market. In fact, you can more than likely find the exact part you lost by someone more than happy to sell it back to you.

While I was dealing with a sick child and home schooling later that morning, Scott called again. He had planned to hurry across the boarder into South Africa for some things we needed, but found that some of his car papers were missing. So David, the guy who works for us, and I hurried to the government office where they'd been the week before. Scott thought he'd left the papers he needed in one of the offices.

We stood at the wooden counter of this office where four or five women were sitting at desks with piles of paper surrounding them. How in the world were we ever going to find one missing paper? After a good twenty minutes of no one noticing we were there, someone came to help us. She pulled out a box after hearing our request and started going though papers.
Sure enough, the copy Scott needed was sitting in file. I was impressed. They might not have a modern filing system, but in five minutes the woman had found what we needed.

Now all I had to do was fax him a copy. Easy, right?

No.

I returned home to fax the copy and quickly ran into a problem. One of the things Scott is replacing in Maputo is the fax cartridge which he took with him. Well, apparently, you can't send a fax without this cartridge, even though I didn't need to print.

So once, I again I was off to town to try and find a place to fax the car papers.

That's the brief overview of the day so far. I won't even go into the rest of the week in trying to register our bikes and getting a new post office box.

To end on a positive note, don't forget to leave a comment on my last post for a chance to win a copy of Chef's Deadly Dish! Drawings on Monday!

Have a GREAT day!

Lisa