First Time I Saw Drugs

I was a hotel maid. I cleaned the white stuff because I thought it was salt. The housekeeping manager said it was drugs.

Like most immigrants, I once worked in minimum wage jobs that had nothing to do with my university education and previous jobs in radio and television production.  I cleaned hotel rooms and was very unhappy because it was a one-country workforce where all room attendants spoke one language during staff meetings and in the lunch room.

Ignore them. That is nothing that sucks out venom like pretending someone doesn’t exist. I did my rooms and smiled at guests but one day the housekeeping manager was livid. Why did I clean #412? Aaah! Aaah! I was assigned that room. Believe me, I forget my birthday sometimes but I’ll never forget 412 because it was a ‘notorious’ room. You’ve never had the pleasure of cleaning hotel rooms so you don’t know those rooms, that every hotel cleaner dreads.

The housekeeping manager said I destroyed the guest’s contraband. Contraband what, where? She said I wiped out the white stuff on the dressing table. Yes, I did because I was thorough. Some guests would take a look at a cleaner and not like her, resulting in constant complaints to the Front Desk. The manager said the white stuff is drugs. True. True dat. I cleaned the salt. To cut a long story short, the hotel offered to reimburse the guest, but he declined the offer and checked out with his family. 

That was the first and last time I saw that stuff that looks like salt people stuff in their noses. What I don’t understand are girls dabbling in that mess. The most beautiful thing nature ever made is woman. Beautiful as we are, there is something in us that triggers the villain in men. But hey, it’s a free country and if girls want to do drugs, let them. It’s a short cut to the thrash can.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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