Drama

It seems to me that drama is a way of life here. And it plays itself out in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Take yesterday, for example. The heat was on and tempers flared along with the temperature. The workmen in our house all wittingly or unwittingly participated in the black mood of the artisan working in our entry way. And what is normally at the heart of the drama is money (or the lack of money to be more accurate). The result at the end of the day was an argument with the supplier of zeliig. He didn’t give us the correct amount of tile and was demanding more money to provide us with what we needed. Egos got involved and we refused to pay more. So this meant we couldn’t finish the stairs we’ve spent an entire year trying to do. No more zeliig to finish the final four steps. So the workers laying the tile called it quits. And the worker who was stripping the front door of its toxic lead paint got a piece of something or other in his eye so he had to stop to tend to his wound. And the artisan who set the dominoes tumbling grumbled off the job complaining that we was hungry and wouldn’t pay him (not true … we just wanted him to finish his days work before giving him his daily wage. A lesson we learned the hard way after paying people before the job was done and then never seeing them again.) I am at the end of my pay period and money is tight. So I was in a foul mood when I left to teach because everyone was asking me for money ahead of the agreed upon schedule. So my class suffered because of my short fuse. When I came home after teaching an extra class due to a last minute request from a colleague, it looked like the Moroccan mafia waiting outside me door. Everyone wanted money and the peacemakers had arrived with them to settle the mob down. But money was dispensed and today everyone is friends again.
And that’s an example of the more subtle type of drama.

The more exciting drama is when shouting and yelling occur. And oh boy the volume that can be generated is awesome. This can result in people not speaking for a year or more and the entire town seems to take sides. I myself have participated in this. And yes, the issue was about money. Who owed whom money. And while I now give a slight nod of recognition to my antagonist, his wife still won’t allow her children to say hello to me. But one of her sons likes to greet me when neither of his parents is around. He sneaks a look right and left before kissing me and exchanging a few words. Then he hurries off. It’s a secret love affair along the lines of Romeo and Juliet. Drama. Life is full of it here.