Aleit Park, next to our flat, got its grass trimmed today. I can't recall when it was last cut, but I think it was in October sometime.
A man stands hear the northern boundary of the park, with grass up to his knees as he cus it with a weed-eater.
The same boundary fence, with the men hard at work using weed-eaters.
In the rest of the park, mowers without grass buckets are used to trim the thinner grass.
A proud worker insisted I take his photograph.
The men cut the grass on the pavement near the "rustic" wooden fence.
Grass in the foreground waiting for attention.
A lone Hadeda picks its way through the piles of cut grass left lying all over the park.
On Sunday a group of 4 homeless men arived to wash their clothes in the stream. They stayed the whole day, shouting at one another in their drunken state. They were so drunk they could hardly walk straight. We could still hear them with all the windows closed in our flat.
Today the same part of the park is looking a bit neater, even though all the tree rubble in the background is still there. The gardener for our block of flats cuts the grass regularly, as shown in the photo of the drunks. The parks people always ignore this side of the stream, except to trim the edges.
Why? Because the publishers in their infinite wisdom, and for reasons known only to themselves and perhaps Alexander McCall Smith, have determined that these audio books shall only be sold to customers in the USA and Canada. The titles are not even available in the author's home of the UK, let alone anywhere in Africa. It's another form of Apartheid, only this time most of Africa, including South Africa and Botswana, have been reduced to "Bantustan" status, meaning that they are excluded from the global marketplace. It's comforting to know that the UK is also regarded as a "Bantustan" in this case, but it still doesn't eliminate the sheer injustice of it all.
