Staff Appreciation Day

Staff Appreciation Day went off this Thursday, and was an adventure.
You try to delegate things to other people, but things often require a
fair amount of improvisation here in Zambia. Case in point: I wanted to
have Cokes for the staff at the party on Thursday. In order to get
Cokes here, you have to have a bottle to deposit. So I tried to
delegate the rounding up of 200 Coke bottles to one of our staff
members, was assured that I'd have the crates by lunch time, and then of
course they don't show up. So I scrounge around myself, find seven
crates, only to find that the transport I'd arranged to carry them was
full of people it had offered a lift to the town, so I had to arrange
for a different car. Then I get to the BOMA to find out that there's a
national shortage of Cokes (American imperialists, watch out! Your hold
is slipping). After a brief moment of panic that an atomic bomb had
been dropped on Atlanta, I went for plan B -- buying juice. But you
can't buy disposable cups in Kasempa. So I considered having everyone
bring a cup, but then spied some bottles of orange drink in the corner,
bought them, and got them back just in time.