Part of living in the developing world means learning to deal with a life of minor inconveniences and what I’ve dubbed ERM’s, or eye-rolling moments. Here are recent examples:

1. I came home from Istanbul to find my house without water and spent two nights pouring water down the toilet to flush. Turns out, I just didn’t recharge the water meter properly – you’re supposed to take this little gadget to the gas station, where you pay them for water and they load the credit into the gadget. You then touch the gadget to the water meter and it automatically recharges. Evidently, that was too complicated for me.

2. On Saturday, I was on my way to Bloemfontein with two friends. They stopped to get their passports stamped and I turned off the car while waiting. When they returned, my car wouldn’t start. It wasn’t a battery or a fuel problem. We spent 20 minutes trying to push-start my car around the parking lot at the border post with the help of two random, drunk men. Finally a friend of a friend showed up and got it done. Then, collectively, we made the very very bad decision to drive the 75 kilometers to Bloem anyway. Of course, the car wouldn’t start when we finished our shopping. After 45 minutes of pushing the car around the Waterfront Mall parking lot in the dark with about 8 mall security guards, it started to rain. At which point, you kinda just want to laugh and kinda just want to lie down and cry. Again, a stranger showed up and, on his first try, got the car started. I drove us back home, terrified of stalling out on the N8.

3. With my broken down car sitting in my driveway, I received a phone call from the mechanic that had just replaced my alternator two weeks earlier. She informed me that when putting my car back together, they had accidentally put someone else’s car battery in my car and my battery in his car. But he was out of the country so they couldn’t switch them back until he returned.

4. On Monday, our furniture was supposed to arrive from Bloemfontein – we’ve been living with nothing but beds in our house since May, so imagine our excitement at finally having sofas, a coffee table and a dining table! The driver called 2pm to say he had picked everything up. At 5pm, we called the driver who said he was only just leaving Bloem and would be at our house in two hours. At 9pm, we called again and the company’s owner told us that our stuff was at the office because he didn’t want to disturb us at night and sent the driver home. My roommate yelled at him for not even informing us that he had made that decision, threatened to call the police and then promptly hung up. Our furniture arrived at 7:15am the next morning.

5. A few nights later, I took a taxi to the new Italian restaurant in town. Only to discover that they had completely run out of pasta.

And there you have it. Classic ERMs from Lesotho.

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And a bonus for you today! My newest addition to the blog is sharing the Friday headline from The Lesotho Times, one of our local newspapers. It comes out on Fridays and, just like in Newsies, they put up posters around town, loudly proclaiming the leading story in all caps. Usually, the headlines are super entertaining.

This Friday’s Lesotho Times headline:

BEAUTY QUEEN WINS CAR