The weeds had begun to get going in our yard again, and we knew that we had to do something about it. So, on the last Sunday of August, we got into the car and drove over to the area of the K'naan absorption center. Every weekday, there are olim (immigrants) from Ethiopia there, waiting to do work as day laborers. Sure enough, when we pulled up, several of them came running over to our car. Their Hebrew is not any better than mine (in fact, it's probably not as good in many cases!). Nevertheless, we managed to negotiate an hourly rate (5 shekels higher than I had initially proposed. Two guys tried to get in the car, even though I had said that we only needed one man. Luckily, the automatic door-lock failed to unlock on one side, so only the guy on the other side was able to get in, and he got the job.
It turns out that his name is Moshe, and he did a great job for us, completing it in well under the 2 hours that I had estimated. Of course, I had agreed to pay for a minimum of 2 hours of work, and I was happy to do that. In fact, I gave him 70 shekels (yet another 5 above the agreed-upon rate) and made sure that I got his number so that I can call him for work in the future.
From time to time, we will no doubt call him again, as the weeds begin to grow. We have vowed NEVER to let it get as bad as it did this past Spring, when we paid a gardener a whopping 1800 shekels! We clearly should have shop around more that time because, although it had gotten MUCH worse, it only took a couple of guy 4 hours to clear it all out! They did need power tools for that, though.
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