The Fun of Paying "Protection" Fees

We were warned that around the edge of the city sits members of gangs who follow trucks in and then "strongly suggest" that you should pay them for protecting your things. Nice of them isn't it, all that protection and all...just so thoughtful! :/ Anyway since our items arrived at night we thought that would be in our favor and it might be missed by the gangs, but in the morning we found out the truck didn't go on to our house that night but stayed in town so of course when the truck arrived, so did our "protectors".

This pic shows Barry and our team member who came to help us sort out the amount we would pay for their "help". All in all we paid about $30 and then they all left but one, which I wasn't really crazy about but eventually he left also. I kept taking the items from him so that he wouldn't go into the house! We ended up with several pieces of wood furniture broken and bad rope burns on our sofa due to the fact that they never wrapped anything and obviously did not use a closed container. We literally spent hours on the phone to the men in charge but of course no one would accept responsibility. They increased our moving fees by almost $300 so we were trying to get them to knock that off in exchange for the damaged items but in the end we just ate it.

There are so many more details to this but suffice it to say that it wasn't at all like we expected but it did arrive and after we get some things fixed and clean up some others we'll be in good shape.

Not really sure why this moving guy was running in front of the truck, but this is how it arrived at 7 in the morning.

Notice the small crowd gathering on the right, they are the gang members. Always lots to learn here and again I just keep remembering The Pineapple Story, it has really helped keep me focused. If you have never read the book, here is a link to the actual man sharing his story. It's about an hour long but worth your time. I just clicked "download" and I was able to listen to it with no delays. I have no idea what else is on that site but was happy to find this available.

See, I am getting caught up, still lots to share and I have slightly gotten out of order but that just keeps it exciting right? :)