cutting the grass

inefficiency is something i've learned to get used to in zambia. nothing usually gets done in a timely manner, and many times take multiple tries to get done correctly. for instance, last week our gardener, this 19 year old rasta boy, gift, (who is awesome), came to me asking about mowing the lawn. most of the time people here just use a slasher blade to cut the grass by hand. but, one of his friends had a lawn mower we could borrow, so he was wanting to use it. he had never used a lawn mower before and was super excited! so i went with him to pick it up so he could mow our lawn.

in my past experience, lawn mowing is a fairly simple process that might take a couple hours depending on how large your yard is (our yard is not large at all). but no, this process took a solid 3 days! insane.

first off, the lawn mower has to be plugged in to an outlet. so that makes it a little tough as you're moving throughout the yard. it was on a long cord which helped, but you still had to move it around to different outlets. then, since the lawn mower was fairly old, the single blade on the bottom obviously broke when it hit a small rock in the yard. so we piled it back into the car, took it to one of gift's friends, and he welded it back together for us. success.

so the next day he starts mowing the lawn again, but the new welded blade broke again bc it was so weak after having been welded back together so many times. sooo, we loaded the lawn mower back in the car, took it back to the same friend, and had him make a whole new blade to put on. success.

this new blade was much stronger and sturdier so we figured we were set. get back and gift starts the lawn mower, and it shakes like crazy. apparently the new blade was much heavier than the older one and has thrown off the balance of the lawn mower or something weird like that. so as gift continues to mow the lawn he has to take breaks every once in a while bc the machine shakes his entire body as he uses it and makes his forearms cramp up. haha

finally, 3 days later, the lawn was cut and looked much better!! i think im gonna make gift stick to slashing the grass with the blade from now on though....