Episode 3: Shit Out of Luck Without a Paddle
As one does when one is about to move house, you go to the new place to start planning the move, where to place furniture, where to fit what, and what not. The light of day never looked as stark as the day we stepped into this empty house and had to step right back out to get air. For 10 days, we scrambled – old t-shirts from the charity shop, detergents galore from the gas place, asked a local contractor to spare two sets of hands. Ten days didn’t seem enough before moving day on 1 June. But we got it done. Swept – check. Mopped – check. Scraped – check. Ceilings, walls, tiles scrubbed – check. Dead vermin disposed of – check. Concrete de-weeded – check. Three bakkie-loads of junk removed – check. But we’d run out of time, and what couldn’t be taken away remained. We’d tried our best. With big sighs and the oppressing feeling of what-the-fuck-did-we-get-into, we moved in on 1 June.
Truth be told, we battled mixed feelings of disgust and respect… do we say something, do we complain, or do we row this boat? Good thing we decided to row, because come the first rains in June, boy, was I glad the Indian in me saves plastic containers, because we would have needed to put on Wellingtons IN the house. EVERYTHING got wet. And the wind blowing through cracks made it just that much more uncomfortable that we couldn’t help think, but really, what the actual FUCK did we get into.
A few shocks here and there taught us not to use appliances in the kitchen. An insane number of cockroaches taught us NEVER to walk without shoes. And peeling paint over our bed – well, we couldn’t teach ourselves to sleep with our mouths closed, so who knows how much of that shit we swallowed.
So we went on, museum, dreary damp house, repeat. The boy child’s asthma flared. The dog child learnt to tiptoe because I couldn’t explain how that amount of broken glass could accumulate in a backyard. And we hoped the dog child was smart enough to skirt the open pit of rubbish that used to be a pool.
We made it through most of June semi-alive and still fairly shell-shocked. In the meantime, we weren’t being compensated for the hard slog we were putting in, and struggled to wrap our heads around demands for rent for the days we spent exorcising the place of its stink and filth and rubbish.
No discussion, no reason, no logic… lease is canceled, 1 July. Out you go. No museum. No office to work from. Nada.
But why? What had we done to deserve this treatment? The answers would come soon enough, and they would change everything.
You might ask why I’m telling this story. Or what right do I have to tell it publicly. So I’ll explain slowly. This community has made it clear, very publicly (and specifically on the WhatsApp group we were so unceremoniously banished from), that it has a great deal of knowledge (true and a lot of it otherwise) of our affairs. So this community has made our affairs a matter of public interest.
But wait, that’s not all. Again, this community, and the honorable Mayor, by his own admission, is aware of the legal matters with the local court. All those submissions are matters of public record. And so I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already have an inkling about. All I’m doing is aligning the narrative with the truth.
Let me help you out a little more… here’s a quick 101 about what “defamation” means. It’s when you share untruthful information with the intent to discredit and impugn someone’s reputation. Here’s a free test to help you understand whether or not your actions can be prosecuted:
- What was my intention when I shared/published what I shared/published?
- Is what I shared/published, the truth?
If your answer to either or both questions is in the negative, guess what? You’re shit out of luck. Shit out of luck and without a paddle.
To be continued…
