Residents at the garden flats where I stay are undecided whether or not to be angry with the little old Italian lady who stays by herself in one of the flats. Every time water comes back, she immediately sets her sprinkler valves strategically on her very green lawn and waters it for hours until the ground is soggy. More water flows freely into her flowerbed from a separate hosepipe. Admittedly, hers is probably the best yard on the premises, and the lawn and flowers are just marvellous. But in the face of the water crisis we are all experiencing, her idiosyncrasy smacks of selfishness to most tenants. What’s more, when the water comes, it has so little pressure that her turning on the outside taps somehow prevents the water from going into her immediate neighbours geysers. My family and I live right next door to her, and we are hardest hit.

Another thing is the combined water billing system. The old lady uses the most water yet is the most vocal each time the bill hikes. Seemingly unaware of anything, she continues to soak her yard at every opportunity. At one time, water was available only so briefly that by the time my mother got enough to soak her laundry, the taps were dry, and the old lady next door had been watering her yard again – meaning we had no reserve storage in our geyser for the next I don’t know how many days. I heard my Ma utter under her breath that some people just pretend to be blissfully ignorant and just won’t make necessary adjustments even to help others realise basic comforts. Some tenants go as far as saying she is a heartless racist still psychologically living in Rhodesia.

On another point, ever since my sisters changed schools owing to relocation, they are harassed daily by both staff and prefects for wearing black shoes instead of brown. Of course we would like very much to comply with proper school regalia regulations, but school shoes of any colour are now a scarce commodity wherever you search, from Bata to Meikles. Understandably, authorities can’t be blamed for wanting to maintain order but aren’t they also just pretending to be stubbornly ignorant of reality, and refusing to adjust? Should they? The same school authorities no longer bother to explain by letter as used to be the tradition, but now have this knack of instructing kids to bring certain amounts of money; say $500,000 or so at a time. My often-cynical mother conceives of this as daylight robbery by people “trying to subsidise their wages through child exploitation.”

I recall the words of one psychologist saying of World War One that some people simply mentally refuse to live in the present by being “seemingly oblivious” of the changes around them. They want to have their bacon and eggs even as they dwell in the shacks that were once mansions that got taken apart by scud missiles. Now between the old lady and the school authorities – I want to believe the former is just being that; an old lady. And the latter, well maybe they just cannot help themselves . . . though I doubt my Ma would agree with me.

This entry was posted on November 20th, 2007 at 3:36 pm by Natasha Msonza and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.