I always thought the term "Neighbour's from hell" was a bit harsh to be said in that way. I retract that thought. My goodness the neighbour's I have are giving me a headache!! It is really getting too much for me. The thing is they are not permanent neighbour's. So when they do arrive here I inevitably say a silent prayer that they leave soon 😂 It is also a strange setup. The unit belongs to the daughter of this family that comes and stays here. The daughter lives in Mpumulanga. Well, they all do, but this last year the family of the daughter have been coming here quite regularly. The Grandmother, supposedly a Pastor, but I suspect she is more of a Sangoma (highly respected healer among the Zulu people of South Africa who diagnoses, prescribes, and often performs the rituals to heal a person physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually) than anything else from the weird chanting that she does at night. The first time she did this chanting I actually laid a complaint against her with the Body Corporate of the complex for disturbance of the peace. This silly woman started her chanting at 11 o'clock at night! I was already asleep and woke to this weird chanting and screeching and feet stomping. At first I did not know what the hell was going on because I thought she was in my house!! I live in a semi-detached unit and the walls between us are paper thin! To make matters worse she has this barotone voice! Even when she talks on the cell phone I can hear her here in my house. Anyway, after the complaint she seemed to have taken to doing her chanting in her bedroom with the door closed. It is slightly better but still annoying! Then she has this habit of doing her morning business calls while she is sitting on the throne!! I mean really! Who does that??? My bathroom and her bathroom are right next to each other! So I now have to endure listening to this lot...and she does not talk quietly. I can hear every single word! Then if it is not that, then she puts her ear pods in her ears and sings along to whatever she is listening to!
Needless to say, she soon left for a while....it was bliss! Then next thing the granddaughter was staying here with a bunch of her friends! They were a lot more tolerable than the grandmother but again, typical youngsters. They have a wheelie bin right outside their unit, but no, it does not get used! The pizza boxes and take out food and wine bottles just get tossed into the yard!! The gardener used to clean up when he came to do the garden once a week but eventually also said that is not his job. So he stopped. Those youngsters were here for about 3 months. Then they left and the grandmother was back. The granddaughter came to visit and I could hear the grandmother reprimanding the granddaughter for not cleaning the house. I can only imagine what it looked like inside. This bunch also leave the lights on day in and day out! Those lights have been on permanently since last year March when this family arrived after the tenant who lived here for 2 years moved out. Never mind that South Africa is running out of electricity! To top it all they have not paid their water or electricity bill for more than a year!! How they do not get cut off is completely beyond me. If I did that I would be cut off immediately! I guess that must be a perk of being an ANC member. They seem to get everything for free, albeit there was a final letter of demand stuck on their gate last week Wednesday. Whether that even made any impact on them is another question.
And now for the cherry on the cake! Some other lady relative arrived last Wednesday and on Friday another lady arrived. Friday evening the grandmother arrived. So now I have to listen to the barotone voice and one of the other ladies runs up and down the wooden stairs like a frigging elephant! Last night there was a lot of activity in the unit. The going up and down the stairs was really becoming irritating, then the chanting started, and for some reason they were in and out of the unit all night. The early hours of the morning I could still hear them up and down the stairs and they were constantly using the water in the kitchen. For some reason when they use the water in the kitchen I hear this "clang, clang" of the water pipes. Trust me, trying to sleep through this all was not an easy task!!
The crunch came this morning, now I know this is going to sound very disgusting, but it will give you an idea of what I woke up to. I had my cat, Lucy, snuggling next to me on the bed, I started smelling this unpleasant smell and thought that Lucy needed to go poop. This is the first time EVER that I have smelt this. It was already after 6am which is the normal time I get up and let the cats out. So I let them out and came back upstairs and went into the bathroom. Now in winter I keep the bathroom door closed as well as the spare room door closed. For some reason the cold air that comes from those two rooms is unbearable in the winter that is why I keep the doors closed. Anyway, I go into the bathroom and am met by this putrid smell!! I thought there must be a sewerage problem! I checked the loo. Smelt at the drains and could not smell anything. So I then go to open the curtains in the spare room. As I opened the door this horrid stench filled my nostrils!! I nearly puked!!! I thought this is absolutely impossible for this room to smell like this! I immediately raced to open the curtains and windows and rushed out of the room so quick and closed the door. I now thought I better go check the drain outside and see if there is sewerage overflow! So I go out and look. Nothing to be seen and the air outside is fresh and clean. My mind is now boggled! I walk around the house and as I get to the back yard I look up and see the next door bedroom windows are wide open! The penny dropped...they (the neighbour's) obviously had some or other ritual in the early hours of the morning!!! Lord only knows what they cooked up or fried, or burnt....but it stank to the high heavens that they even had to open their own windows!!!! It now explains why the stench was strongest in my bathroom and the spare room because they are on the side where the neighbour's kitchen is. You may be wondering how the smell could enter my home. Well, this is South Africa. Our homes do not have double glazed windows. Actually the windows do not even keep the cold out!! On top of that this complex I am in is actually quite old! More to the point is that developers/builders here in South Africa will inevitably cut corners where they can which results in shoddy workmanship...
I was pushed to the point of retaliation! This bunch normally wakes up the same time as I do, but this morning it was dead quiet. Clearly they were now sleeping after their all nighter! So, I thought this is the perfect time to give them a taste of their own medicine! I generally do not do things out of retaliation but after a whole year of putting up with all this disrespect of other people's peace and quiet, it was pay back time! I went out to feed the birds an apple and came back inside and slammed the security gate shut at the sliding door! Trust me. That gate, if you slam it, is really loud! I then proceeded up the stairs...stomping like an elephant! I opened the spare room door and slammed it shut! Then I stomped down the stairs. I slammed all the kitchen cupboards open and shut! I put the kettle on to make tea. I slammed the mug onto the granite counter. Then I threw the teaspoon into the kitchen sink! Then I decided to sweep the floor. I purposefully slammed the broom into the cornices and into the stair at the bottom of the staircase and when I got to the kitchen table I deliberately hit the broom on the legs of the table and chairs, the legs are steel, so you can imagine the "ping, ping" sound. I moved the chairs by dragging them across the floor on purpose, so they made a screeching sound. My next intention was to put the radio on loud at 8 o'clock. I had to wait until 8am because the body corporate rules stipulate no noise before 8am. So 8am came and I went to put the radio on...only no sound came from the radio!! It dawned on me that I had loadshedding then from 8am to 10:30am!! For those who do not know what loadshedding is, it is interruption of electricity supply to avoid excessive load on the generating plant. Well, they had some shut eye until 10:30am because then I put the radio on loud!!! 😂😂😂 I know, I know, you think I'm crazy! No man. Enough is enough!! Let them see what it's like on the other side of the wall when someone makes a noise! I did notice the person that ran up and down the stairs like an elephant was a lot more quieter when they got up! So maybe they got the message LOUD AND CLEAR! That's it...my rant for today. 😄
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