Wrote this yesterday...

...But my internet went down for most of the day. Am posting this from an internet cafe before I head home to fight with Telkom some more. Joy.

It has been a really eventful weekend. I feel completely exhausted, actually. But the majority of the weekend was good fun, so it was worth it.

My jewellery sale on Saturday was pathetic. I made a fraction of the sales I made last year and feel very bleak about it all because it impacts on my Christmas presents and holiday spending money. That said, I feel even worse for the other folks who were selling because they didn't do well either.

I'm not sure whether it was the super hot weather, the fact that it's the middle of the month or whether there were other things happening on the day, but turnout was poor. And then we had some drama too...

One of the ladies who lives in our complex, Jolie, is from the Democratic Republic of Congo and is a French speaker. Her English is quite poor, but between my extremely rusty French and her Pidgin English, we can usually get by just fine and we've become fairly friendly. We'll stop and chat if we see each other, but we're not at a point where we visit each other or have phone details etc.

Anyway, I saw Jolie on Friday and invited her to pop in on Sat, which she did. She seemed fine when she arrived, but said she wasn't feeling well. She couldn't, however, articulate her symptoms and I gathered from her gestures that she felt a bit dizzy or had a headache.

She spent about half an hour browsing through jewellery with one of my neighbours, Rosanna, and tried on various things. Then she said she really wasn't feeling well. Rosanna gave her some sugar water and she said she thought she's better go to the doctor. I followed her to the front door and as she walked out, she collapsed. A friend and I managed to each grab an arm as she went down, so she didn't hit her head on the ground, but we couldn't support her dead weight. Brett, who was displaying his photos, picked her up and carried her to the couch.

Thankfully one of my mates, Shannon, was there and worked as a paramedic for many years, so she knew what to do and propped Jolie's feet up on some pillows and took her pulse, which was racing. I managed to get her to take a few sips of water, but she wouldn’t' eat anything and Rosanna said she apparently hadn't eaten all day. We thought it might be low blood pressure, low blood sugar and the intense heat that had got to her, but she didn't seem to be getting any better and couldn't answer any questions. Of course, all my French went out the window and I couldn't think of how to ask her if this had happened before, if she was diabetic or pregnant or anything else useful.

Instead I jogged down the street in my high heels to her house and asked her domestic worker to wake her husband up as he was apparently sleeping. I'd never met him before, and I don't think he understood the situation as he only came sauntering down the road about 15 minutes later. Eventually, when he arrived, he saw how sick Jolie really was and went to fetch the car to take her to hospital.

Rosanna spoke to him later on and he said Jolie was fine, but the doctors were still trying to figure out what had happened. I don't have their phone numbers, so I'll walk across this afternoon and see how she's doing.

I think that little incident put a bit of a dampener on things too. The good part of the day, though, was getting to chat to the other sellers and visitors. Angel was selling her amazing cupcakes and I'm still trying to decide what's the best thing about them - how beautiful they are or how delicious they taste. I couldn't resist snapping a shot or two. Hopefully she gets some orders from the people who were there.

It was lovely to catch up with her, MJ, who was selling jewellery (totally different to mine, so we got some ideas from each other), Brett and Kim, selling photos, and everyone who popped by to browse. Despite the fact that so many people who said they'd come didn't arrive and I didn't make much money, I really enjoyed the morning.

I have so much stock left over though and I've decided I'm leaving it all unpacked as I have a couple of friends who couldn't be there and said they may come by later in the week to have a look. I'm also looking for other avenues to sell my stuff, so if you have any ideas, let me know.
The rest of the weekend was packed, but awesome, but I'll leave the details and photos for tomorrow's post, if my annoying internet connection stops playing up and lets me post at all ;-)

Hah! How true that last paragraph turned out to be!