Chapter 6

Monday was a normal day and the business was going on well and then before knocking off at around 16 hours, our boss gave us some envelopes from human resource department. Our hands our shake as we looked at each with my office met. Now of us wanted to open the envelope, but expecting to hear what the one who is going to open will tell the other. What the hail!! I open it and started to read it.

The letter was a verbal warning. It's said we shouldn't take part in an protests and that the day we reported outside the gate won't be paid because the biomedical system picked it as an absent. I don't remember being outside voluntary. I remember the gates being closed on us. What is all this honestly. I didn't want to question them because I did want to be used as an example.

We all know that the wanted to reduce the Labour force by all means necessary without spending a lot or making the government lose votes since it was only year and half before going to the polls. I looked at Abraham who busted outside the office to our boss to question why that letter wasn't truthful at all. I stayed put. I had enough problems of my own, so I didn't want to follow this one up. I had no energy to do the question and answers job. A day's pay was around k250 so I thought that amount wouldn't make me lose more.

But just after 5 minutes my boss or supervisor came in with Abraham and started talking to the two of. "Maku, you've not questioned your letter like your friend, why?" I smiled and replied "this people are just looking for faults. So I am just being modest and mature about it" he smiled again "true and that is what I was telling Abraham. We need to be careful and stay low. We don't know what is happening in the top management discussions." we chatted up to 17 and only realised that we had gone 30 minutes above knocking off time.

In about three hours time, I was in my usual joint drinking mosi and exchanging some ideas with friends when a guy I heard had been fired walked in. He bought a bigger bottle of whiskey and starting drinking it dry. We didn't question him since we knew what he was going through. We couldn't find the right words to equal the amount of his panicking heart. That only needed psychological help. My eyes were getting watery and thought I couldn't take it anymore. I stood up and went to the toilet so that I can reduce the possibility of breaking down.

I can't remember much what we talked about during the all evening on this day. But I remember very well when the fired guy was done downing his bottle he started insulting and saying a lot of things before he passed out.

We arrived that the hospital the guy was taken to the emergency room. We call the wife and told her the story. She was shocked because with are explanation, the husband didn't go home from work. And we knew immediately that she had not yet received the bad news. I didn't want to be part of those to tell her the bad news so, I went home immediately.

Early that morning I called the machinist to as agreed to look at my taxi that had been down for over two weeks now. I looked at it and thought and asked myself why things were all failing apart. Was this the end of the world or was it just temptations to check our faith. I opened the car boot and checked the autonetor belt that has become a problem to this car. It was cutting every after two days and I couldn't bare the costs anymore. I remember I had even advertised it on social media. The machinists has been picking my call. I tried again, no answer. It was like every one now didn't want to deal with anyone working with kopala mines because of the financial issues we were going through. It was all over. Some people didn't even get anything due to loans at the end of the month. The depended too much on over time which had been removed two months ago to pay loans. But now, the loans had swallowed the pay without any way out.

My rung, and saw it was Martin. I didn't want to pick-up his call because I knew he wanted us to go out. I wanted to find the solution for this car because I might just sell for less if I don't fix this problem. It rung for the third time. This time I picked it up. "Muku, have you heard the bad news?" what bad knows again, I knew were this was going. So I said no but I new it had something to do with the guy we took to the hospital. "Boi, the guy we drove to the hospital has passed on" I was expecting the story to be that he his still in ICU but this came like stub. We exchanged words trying to find out since the beer was pumped out and he looked stable when we left. I cut him without saying buy. If only we had stopped him from drinking it dry. Why didn't we jump in? The pain was unbearable.