I had to sort all of these women out and I’d start with Sonya. It was time to put her back to work again. She was getting a promotion to Executive Assistant and would work for both Michelle and myself. First, though, was dinner. It was time for the midday meal and I was hungry. I hoped Matilda had something fresh on the fire.
I asked Holder, Amos, and Sonya to sit with me during dinner. Michelle joined us. This was the simple part. I wanted Sonya there, to get it on the record. Everything would need to be recorded, just for our own sanity. We had some sort of curried fish over rice for lunch; it was pretty damn good. Mouse had joined us and was paying rapt attention as I gave my instructions. I had the feeling my leadership council was about to expand to three.
After the food was finished, I addressed both Amos and Holder.
“I need to you start working with the oldest of the children on the daily chores. There’s going to be a lot to do and I still rely on you two, but you need to use and train these extra hands. Otherwise, you two will never have time for anything else, which isn’t what we need. So you’ll have those three oldest kids for now to help you. Once a boy turns eight, he starts to work for you.” Damn, I talk too much, sometimes.
Amos looked pleased and proud; Holder looked a little concerned. I didn’t blame him.
Time for reassurances, “You two will still be working with the men while the kids get their schooling, but this will be your first priority. Consider yourself leaders and teachers. On the plus side, you’ll be carrying a lot less firewood in the future.”
Well that brought smirks, and I turned to Sonya, “We need to Org Chart this somehow. I trust you to figure it out. We’re going to have a lot of moving parts and we need to be able to see them.”
You could see the professional in her click back in. THERE was the Sonya I knew and trusted.
“Obviously, you’re back on the job - with a promotion. You are now the Senior Executive Assistant and Village Clerk. You report to and support myself and Michelle for now. Is that OK with you?”
She had a pure smile on for the first time in months, since before the incident with her sister and her now- ex-boyfriend. It was good to see.
“You also get your own tent. You can have mine. I’ll be taking my camper back over and we’ll use that for our office, as well, until we get some building done. Can you put together a roster of everyone we have in the campsite, by the end of the day? You’ll need to get with Captain Timmons to get a roster of his boatmen.”
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I turned to Michelle, “You got anything for her right now?”
Michelle thought for a minute and then said, “We need to refresh our inventories again before the new supplies arrive. We may need to recruit some help for that.”
I looked directly at Mouse, “Can you take over the inventories for us? We’ll teach you everything you need to know and you’ll work with Sonya on how to record it.”
Mouse smiled and nodded.
I let Holder and Amos get back to their day and moved on to my next point.
“I’d like to appoint Mary to be our new teacher, but I’ll need you three to work with her and share knowledge. I’d also like to pull one of the black ladies in to help with that. There's a lot of knowledge to be gained from those cultures as well. Remember that yesterday is the first day of history and tomorrow is the unknown future. Stick to your stories. You can speak about hopes and dreams, but not about achievements and progress to come.” That drew a very puzzled look from Ms. Mouse. If she got close to me, sooner or later she’d have to know.
“The last thing we need to work out is tent and tipi locations. All of our gear will be here soon and tents will start going up. I want to insure that racially divided neighborhoods do not spring up. We need to assign spots and make sure everyone is interspersed.”
This brought nods from everyone, particularly Sonya. She was definitely going to like some of my other ideas. She was definitely still a social justice warrior at heart; that was good. We needed the other voice in our discussions.
“Gather all the ladies and we’ll deal with that this afternoon, so they can simply direct the men, when the tents show up. The fellas do a much better job when they have clear marching orders.”
This brought a chuckle from the group.
“Let’s take a quick walk and figure out this temporary neighborhood.”
Up we got, and I snared Timmons to join in the discussion as well. I planned to add him to the advisory council in the very near future, anyway. If nothing else, I needed another guy there for support.
We ended up dividing tent city up by race, as it turned out. Every other spot was allocated to a different racial background. It was stupid, but entirely necessary. The tents were going up just outside the east side of the palisade; that foot path was about to become a road. The order went alphabetically: Black, Other, White, on the north side, and White, Black, Other, on the south side.
I reminded everyone that this was simply for temporary summer housing; we’d start work on the actual houses later this summer. Then we drew straws.
Everyone got a chance to choose their lot, this included Amos and Holder.
Yeah, it became a mess. Women instantly wanted to trade, they wanted to cluster with their friends. They didn’t say it but they wanted to cluster by race.
Sonya ran the whole thing and she put her foot down. You got what you chose and it’s only temporary spots. She was in her element again.
Sonya sorted.