It’s about 2 in the AM and am in bed trying to sleep, I have been trying to fall asleep for the past 3 hours!! Just when I think I have gotten it, I hear a woman yelling outside in “Kao”; she is ranting and raving and at first I cant make out what she is saying, and I am listening [I make no apologies]. I get out of bed and in my flimsy “nighty” I go to my balcony, its bloody cold and am shivering, but you have to understand that this has grown to be more of a habit than anything else, you hear commotion around here, and we all troop to our respective balconies to witness.
Here I have to explain, I live in a flat surrounded by so many other buildings and we are neighbors who speak only when such incidences occur, mostly coz our work hours permit us to meet at these times only and “catch up” with what is going on with the not so sane neighbors around us. In essence, whatever happens in the next building basically happens close enough for us to be privy to.
So you must have gathered from this that where I live this is almost a daily occurrence and it may as well be termed as normal and it provides “entertainment” albeit the late hours. We have drunken accapella-ists, boxers [or a drunken likeness to it] and those that are very good at verbal exchanges of insults [am dead serious here, they exchange insults and then they walk away!!! Like they were having a conversation!]
Back to my night, there I was, scantily clad, looking over the railing of my balcony at this drunk woman screaming her head off at her sister [lets call her ‘Calm’] who am assuming is either deaf or dead asleep in her house in the flats next to mine. She, the afore mentioned sister has apparently refused to let the ranting, raving sister [we’ll call her ‘Noisy’] into the building and I dint have to be a genius to know it was because she is a drunken nuisance. I wouldn’t let her into my building either!
Well, ‘Noisy’ is really irked and she decides, or rather, declares, that if she wont be let in, no one in that building [neighbors, us, included] would get any sleep, hey, am proof of this!
She takes rocks and pelts the gate with them all the while screaming at ‘Calm’ who is now standing at her balcony looking at ‘Noisy’ like she had never laid eyes on her before [I cant see this, but am saying it either way for effect]. She has a cell in her hand so am assuming she is calling her mother to tell on ‘Noisy’.
On her way to pick up another rock, our watchman gets out and goes at her for waking him up, “how in the hell are we supposed to get any sleep with you making such a racket?!” Hello?!!! You aint supposed to get any sleep dummy! You are supposed to scare away those guys who vandalized my house a while back!! So he follows her, pleads with her to go away, threatens to beat her up, to no avail since she is too drunk to scare. Not so easily daunted is the caretaker of the building that is the object of her fury, he warns her and promptly comes down the stairs mop stick in hand. Seeing this, ‘Noisy’ sits down on the ground like a deflated balloon, she just flops down, he he, I think she sobered up at that instant.
‘Calm’ is talking on the phone and from what the wind blows up to me, I figure she is talking to her boyfriend coz she says she is scared and for the person to come home, at 2AM?! I would have to love you a whole lot for me to get out of my bed because you are scared. Said ‘Noisy’ has since gotten into an argument with the two men and the caretaker gives her two very loud slaps at which point she vows she doesn’t have a sister and walks away, am sure she is now totally sober and heads, God knows where!
Well, back into the house, and try again to fall asleep thanking God that I have a very sane sister who wouldn’t ever pull such a stunt.
