The men molded 625 blocks today; John, the mason in charge, said that the men knew their work but they troubled him too much! He said that as soon as they arrived at the jobsite, they demanded chop money. Chop money was never agreed upon so it was a surprise to both John and us. John went ahead and paid them their chop money for today and yesterday. This afternoon John called and said that the men wanted to change the price of the blocks. The original price was 1 Cedi per block; the men wanted to mold by the bag of cement; they wanted 30 Cedis per bag. John wanted to know what we wanted to do about the price. We told him that we wanted to pay by the block because the blocks were big and they were only getting 28 per bag. It would be several Cedis cheaper for us to pay by the block. When we went out to Kulkpeni this evening to pay them for the blocks they molded, they refused to count the blocks. John gave them 200 Cedis from his own pocket to satisfy them. We did not want to cheat John so we agreed to pay them by the bag but I could tell that the money John gave them was more than the amount owed. We pulled out our calculator and told the block molders that they owed 50 Cedis because they had received too much money from John. You should have seen the look on their faces when we demanded the 50 Cedis back! One of the guys even pulled out his calculator to cross check! John was grinning from ear to ear!
We told them that in the morning they were going to start molding the smaller blocks and they can get between 30 and 32 blocks per bag of cement and that tomorrow we were paying them by the bag and that when they mold extra blocks they were not to come back and ask for additional money. We will see how that works out.
John got one of the pillars for the main gates poured today; the gates are hanging across the entrance so the property is officially closed on 3 sides. This afternoon some cows came across the property and stepped on some of the new blocks which crushed them. Very few people tie their animals; the goats were climbing on top of the wall; the chickens were flying over the wall to get into the property; the sheep were meandering through the property sleeping in the shade of the verandas and the cows were passing through. The kids were climbing all over the walls and wandering around everywhere; it was like a 3-ringed circus out there today.
The air conditioner in our bedroom started dripping water a few days ago. Steve tried to get it to stop but he did not have any success. When we came back from Kulkpeni this morning we stopped and asked Boat, the a/c repair man, to come to the house and service the machine. While he was there, we had him service the a/c unit in the guest bedroom and the one in the room that we eat supper in. He was here all morning; he had not been gone more than 15 minutes when the a/c unit started leaking again so we called him back. He dismantled it and cleaned it again but he could not get it to stop leaking because there was so much mold and junk in the unit. He finally took the unit out of the wall and took it outside and washed it with the power washer; tons of stuff came out of the unit. He told us that he wanted us to have him come every 3 months and clean it! Not happening! Once a year is plenty! It is not leaking right now!
Have a great day!
In HIS Service,
Steve, Kandie and Skeeter
The Monkeyshines
Today was a terrible day! It was worse than Sundays! Do you want to know why it was so bad? Well, even if you don’t want to know I am going to tell you anyway!
1. I did not get taken out of solitary confinement until 5:00 this evening! That is monkey abuse by anyone’s standards!
2. I did not have any human contact today! That will cause me to revert back to a wild animal!
3. I did not get any fresh fruit to eat this afternoon because I had plenty left from this morning. I had to share my food with the fruit flies! Now that is just nasty!
4. 3 strange men were wandering around all morning and half of the afternoon! Everyone knows the danger of talking to strangers!
5. I only had one bottle today because I refused them when Mr. Iddrisu tried to feed me; I was waiting on Mom to come but she never did!
6. The worst torture of all was that I could see Mom and Dad coming and going in and out of the house but they never saved me from the loneliness!
I am not sure that I will get over this day! I think I may have sustained permanent damage from the mental anguish and pain I have been through.
Presently I am in the house; my tummy is full (I drank a whole bottle and a banana); I am snuggled up in Dad’s arms; he is taking a nap but I am just enjoying grooming him by picking at the hair on his arms!
I think I might just live to see another day!
Love, Skeeter
