The Soap Opera Ends!

Finally! The soap opera of our compound seems to have come to an end with a positive conclusion from our standpoint - all three guards and the housekeeper are gone!!! I am not sure how I have said about all this so I will give a brief recap! The issues started about 6 weeks ago with the housekeeper accusing the guards of stealing food from her. They most likely did but of course vehemently denied it. Unfortunately, in the process of investigating the issue we discovered that she had been talking really badly about us herself. We looked to her as a leader for the compound and this is clearly not the sort of leader we needed. This was also the final of several issues relating to housing and transport etc and so we decided to let her go. (but it was a drawn out and difficult process). Meanwhile the issue of the food was never really resolved but that ceased to matter because
a week later MK 15,000 (approx $100) was stolen out of our car!! We have never left money in the car like that before and also always lock the car but came home from a trip and in the process of unloading etc etc just forgot to lock it. Two guards and the gardner had access to the money!! And of course, they all denied it! Thomas, the gardner, was very contrite and very upset. He is smart enough to know that the standard procedure in this case is that 1)they all get fired and/or 2) the police get called in which case everyone gets roughed up a bit till the truth comes out... The guards (Samson and Lloyd) on the other hand were rather obnoxious with their denials and kept saying, "you should have locked the car"... Because we are too soft and because we really did not think Thomas did it and we couldn't fire the guards and not him, we decided to deduct the money from all their salaries. Again, Thomas handles it well knowing this is the best case scenario and the guards whine and complain. A few days later, our third guard, Immanuel, comes forward with some information that indicates Lloyd was the one who took the money. Since we wanted to give it time to learn if Samson had also been in on it and because we did not want to fire people and then leave immediately we did not do anything prior to leaving for London. The day we returned was payday and we were going to address it then. Well, we come home to discover there has been an "emergency"! Immanuel had called our friends on Monday saying they had to come and take our car because Samson and Lloyd were going to steal it that night! Thankfully, the malawain administrator from Baylor came, heard the whole story and fired Samson and Lloyd on the spot. So we came home the next day to just Immanuel who then said that he was being threatend by the other two and just couldn't continue to work here - unfortunately not surprising for how things work here. So we paid him his salary and some severance and sent him on his way. The next day the other 2 show up to plead their case! They of course say that they know nothing about stealing the car, they don't even know how to drive, that Immanuel had actually been in trouble before for stealing a car and that he was the one who hatched the whole plan and when they wouldnt go along with it he used his cell phone to get them in trouble! (they don't have phones) To be honest, their story could be true... But I don't care!!!! I am just so happy that all three are gone. All three had bad attitudes and had been fairly difficult for a while - not the sort of clear cut issues you can fire over but just attitudes and there was too much smoke surrounding all of them! The sad thing is that jobs are hard to come by and they are all three living at a very, very basic level and have families to provide for. The other thing that disturbs me slightly is that Samson and Lloyd still say they did not take the money and Immanuel was not here to have been able to do it... so are Samson and Lloyd lie to the death or did Thomas, the only one I (think) trust and is still working, take it???