I have had better wake up calls ...

Just imagine, you are sleeping in your warm comfy bed, dreaming about a nice layered latte from your favourite coffee shop when suddenly you are woken by your spouse announcing that there is someone rattling the front gates to get our attention. It is still dark as you look at the time … 5.00am … is this just a bad dream or are you really being woken up. Then you hear the rattling … no this is not a dream … this is real. As you stick your head out of the ensuite window to look at the gate you see a man in a police uniform. “Ahhh, morningbos … we hav had a rrepot that theeer hes been someone in yor yad”(Translation: Good Morning Sir, sorry to awaken you from your slumber but we have been advised by telephone that there has been someone loitering on your premises). You quickly stick your head back in the window, because of the cold cold weather outside. You scramble to get warm enough clothes on and as you go outside to open the gate, you find the police officer already in your yard. “Ahhh bos … ar you dooing any work on yor ca? (Translation: Excuse me, but may I enquire to whether you have been performing any mechanical labor on this automobile?). As you look at him with a vacant expression he is now alerting you to the fact that there is a bunch of leaves sticking out from the bonnet and the left hand side of the car is jacked up by bricks and your two left wheels are no longer anywhere to be seen. It is now that the police officer reveals “ahhh bos … it loooks like someone hes taken yor whels and mabe yor batrry (Translation: If you have not yet noticed it seems to appear that there is no longer any wheels on the left hand side of your car. If you could please take the time to look under the hood you will probably find that they have also taken your car battery and placed the leaves there so you didn’t wake from your slumber as they closed the hood). Yes … this is all true. Last night we forgot to put the little red bucky (ute) into the garage and someone has jumped the fence and taken both of the wheels on the left hand side of the car as well as cut the battery cords so they could relieve us of our battery as well. One of the things which sticks out to us is that the police officer admits that they probably would have got here in time to stop this theft if they had a police vehicle. Apparently, the officer had to walk for about 1.5 hours to get to our house because the one vehicle they do have was off somewhere else and even if it was at the station there probably wouldn’t have been enough fuel to drive it (we currently have NO petrol/diesel for sale in Zimbabwe). Ahh, life in Zimbabwe …