Short Story: It`s Not Easy

Short Story: It`s Not Easy

This piece has not been edited by the ShortbreadStories team.

They say life is what you make it: they got it wrong, most of the time life is what makes you. Things started going wrong the minute her Boeing 777 landed at Entebbe International. Her Gucci lizard skin had disappeared between the plane`s cargo hold and the baggage carousel, along with her money belt which she had hidden inside its lining. The belt was pregnant with four thousand dollars in small change.

Then she had waited at the airport for five hours because some fool with the organization she had come to volunteer with had re-christened, changing her name from Lisa Marie to Marissa! Without a phone number to call, tired and getting angrier by the second, she had fumed until she decided to question the guy holding the Marissa placard who he was waiting for: it turned out he was her ride.

Feeling all of her forty years after a sixteen hour flight with a five hour wait as a side dish, she flopped into the back seat of a rickety taxi that in a previous lifetime could have been manufactured by the Japanese. From the way it looked, even Uganda, a country that was light years away from assembling a motorcar, let alone manufacturing one, could vehemently deny it if someone was cheeky enough to suggest it was made by them.

Five minutes out of the airport the road started getting funny, alternately making the tarmac play hide and seek, some times disappearing altogether! Then potholes got into the mix and on top of inhaling dry choking dust, the car started checking out her body: banging a hip here and the head there.

She started sneezing, almost heaving up her lungs and other organs in the process. By the time she got to the sorry looking hotel, she was certain none of her organs were in their original place!

In the small hotel, her room was even sorrier than what she had expected from seeing the façade of the place. The bed was on its last legs and the beddings looked slept-in, the mirror was cracked and the few inches of unbroken glass available were stained. The toilet did not flush and the bowl was chipped; the light seemed set to automatic as it kept going off every now and again. There were roaches and funny noises that suggested the presence of other vermin.

She walked back to the reception area, not knowing why. But whatever the reason, she was not ready for the sight that greeted her. The receptionist, a ferret-looking pint-sized man was had at it with a fat girl in a maid`s uniform! Before she could turn away and save them the embarrassment, the maid saw her and cheerily called out a greeting. The small man turned and wave