this week’s cop stop...

Friday, November 30, 2007

this week’s cop stop... My roommate put is best: "Lisa, why do these things always happen to you?!?" Well, you know the routine - every week it's some new harrowing experience for yours truly. This week's episode: police stations and a court date! Know what I learned today? It's illegal to talk on a cell phone when you're in the car. Never mind that everyone here does it anyway, never mind that no one actually knows that it's the law. Never mind that when I was on the phone, traffic was at a COMPLETE STANDSILL and I was answering a call from Mandy, who was worried that I had not found my destination yet... so she heard the cop pound on my window and yell at me to turn up into the police station. (this happened this afternoon, directly in front of the one police station in town, lucky me.) *sigh, here we go again* I thought... We negotiated for like an hour in his office... you've got to understand that cops here can pretty much do whatever they want, there is NO consistency in ANYTHING, and the especially like to mess with the ex-pats, the white people who supposedly have all the money... He wanted to impound the car (sweet then we would be 8 people sharing ONE car in the academy carpool!); he wanted to keep my licence, he wanted to show me that he was the boss, cool. My night in shining armor ended up being Matt Moffett, close friend and cool-guy extroidinare. (I was on the phone with his daughter when she heard the cop pound on my window, so she knew something had happened and came looking for me.) Once he came, the cop wasn't at so much liberty to mess with me, thank goodness! Matt was able to vouch for me that yes, I would show up at court as promised, and in doing so, convinced the officer to let me leave with my car and my liscence. This is, of course, after we both wrote our statements... not on anything official, but handwritten on a plain piece of paper he had lying around. super official, hu?!? ha. So now I will spend Monday in court, awaiting a judge to hear my case. I hear crazy things about the Malawian court system, it will be interesting to see it firsthand. There is no telling if they will see me first thing in the morning, or if I will be there all day. There is no telling if they will fine me or not, and how much they'll rip me off for if they do... Love it here! I have a feling I will really miss my kiddos on Monday... man the biggest bummer of this is that now I have to find a sub and write sub plans! agh! And I was gonna be so excited about making it all semester without missing a day... If you feel like talking to The Big Guy about this, ask that they would see me quickly on Monday, and that the judge would be fair, instead of ripping me off... *sigh* November it hasn't been my month! but it's OK... if it was easy all the time it wouldn't be Africa, right?!? and this sort of stuff is half the adventure... Here goes nothing!