The Crate Adventure

The guy talking is one of the gang members who is trying making his case for why we need to pay him double for one crate what we paid for a full truck load. You see, this month is R*m*d*n and for them that is their major holiday season. It is also the month of "the 13th salary". According to their law, you must pay all of your employees an extra months salary this month. Your gardener, house helper, trash man, etc. receives an extra salary. This also helps them to be able to afford the many feasts and gift giving that goes on at this time. I think he was trying to pull that on us. We really didn't consider them employees or hired help if you know what I mean!

The driver, by Barry, was explaining that this was only one crate, not a whole truck load. They didn't want to hear any of it, their minds were made up. Barry kept negotiating and told them what we paid for a whole truck load before and what our friends had paid a week earlier. I left to go in the house because it was very frustrating. They wouldn't let the drivers undo our crate until they were paid. All in all their were 25 men there, after the negotiating several left but many stayed to unload the crate. Uhh..thanks! In the end we ended up paying around $35 US for their "protection".

They were standing in our crate unloading it from the top, then they asked if anything was breakable! After they got it half empty they pulled the side off and unloaded from the front. I only had a couple of small things break and I am pretty sure it was from them standing on the boxes because everything overall was in really good condition. I didn't want any of them in our home so we just had them place everything on our porch.

After the crate was unloaded into our yard (we wanted to keep the wood) they all came and shook all of our hands and said thank you!! What a crack up!

I sure would like to know how that money gets divided! There are so many of them and who do you trust to give it out equally? I have been told by several people that the gangs actually have a letter from the police stating that they have the right to do this! Go fig! Crazy!

Here we have some very happy kids who were glad to see toys, personal items, and bedspreads, etc. that had been packed up 20 months ago!