A Tale of Two Toilets (part II)

Continued from yesterday, the tale of getting two toilets repaired in Mali in 1999. 

Day three - Back to the scene of the disaster. For several hours, Mr. Sissoko chipped away at the base of the toilet, aided by my house worker, Emmanuel.  A pile of cement and tile fragments formed in my bathroom and eventually, the throne itself lay on its side, its base cracked in several places and a few small pieces actually broken off. Did I have any superglue?.....

I wasn’t too sure about super gluing my toilet together, but decided I’d go get some. I took advantage of the time in town to get some vegetables, since I had invited my teammates who were in town for the day, to supper at my house. Kind of inconvenient, but I hadn’t seen them in a while and they would only be around until the next morning. Unfortunately, I hadn’t bought any meat, which you have to do early in the morning at the market, while it’s still fresh. At this point, I figured I’d deal with that later, perhaps buying something at the evening market.

The superglue did do the trick. Unfortunately, even with the toilet entirely off, they were unable to unblock the toilet. Not having a proper “snake” to stick down the pipe, they tried all sorts of things including wire and a garden hose. Finally at four, I told them to stop for the day. My bathroom looked like a real disaster area and I needed to get to work on supper. That and I had a rather daring idea involving…. battery acid.

Here, I must stop my story to say that folks working in the developing world often end up in situations where they fell a bit like MacGyver, the TV character who always had to get out of scrapes using odds and ends, his own ingenuity and his Swiss Army knife. This was such a time. I had a flash of inspiration (insanity?). The rag that I had accidentally flushed down the toilet had been a shirt just a few weeks before, until the day I spilled battery acid on it. The acid ate right through the cloth, so I made it into a rag. Couldn’t the acid do the same thing now?

I went back into town and bought two bottles of battery acid and went to see if there was any fresh meat in the afternoon market. It was too early for that, so I went off to one of our two restaurants, which sells Chinese egg rolls. I had in mind to buy enough of these to feed us all and reheat them at home. Unfortunately, it was 4:30 and they hadn’t made them yet. Could I come back at 6:30? Well, that’s when my guests were arriving. How about 6:00?

Back home, I donned surgical gloves and attempted to open the bottle of battery acid. This is one of the few products made in Mali, which means that the plastic bottle is practically impossible to open without cutting through the plastic lid with a knife. Not impossible with the local vinegar or bleach bottles, but a bit more tricky when you’re dealing with battery acid. I managed, however, and poured the contents into the pipe. The water started bubbling immediately. Within an hour, the water level had dropped considerably, but had not unblocked.

It was 5:00 and I desperately needed a shower, but that was impossible because of the rubble in the bathroom. Fortunately, I have a bathtub in the other bathroom. I was undressed and about to step into the water when the doorbell rang. I yelled something out, pulled my clothes on and went to answer it. It was my landlord, who lives in the capital city, 12 hours away by train, and only visits once or twice a year! Eeek! I invited him and his companion in because they wanted to see the place. Fortunately, they didn’t want to see the bathroom, where my toilet lay dying. They talked about this and that - painting the exterior of the house. Oh, and could I give them the rent then? This meant writing out a receipt and subtracting off the plumbing costs for Fantasy #2 (which was not my fault).

Around 5:30 they left, and I headed back to the waiting bathtub. Once again the doorbell rang. This time it was the pastor. He had come to see about why I had gotten Mr. Sissoko to the work when we had contacted Mr. Sacko personally. It was only at this point that I realized that the plumber who’d been in my house was not the one we had contacted together. Mr. Sacko had come by later in the day. He seemed familiar at the time, and also seemed to know Mr. Sissoko. When he saw that Mr. Sissoko was doing okay, he left. I couldn’t quite figure it out at the time. Seems the pastor felt bad, reasonably so, that we had contacted this guy and then let another man do the job. We decided that I should give some money to pay for his gas money for coming out.

Well, I finally got my bath and even made it to the restaurant to get our egg rolls before my teammates  arrived at 6:30. We had a good time, in spite of everything. They had just driven up from the capital and had mail for me and some grocery items you can’t get locally, including some baking soda.

"Use the baking soda, Tim."

After they left, I had another “MacGyver moment”  while putting away the baking soda. Something from way back in chemistry class popped up in my brain. Baking soda is a base and reacts with acid to produce lots of gas. What if I poured the acid down the pipe, let it go down some, and then poured a solution of baking soda and water down after it?

I proceeded to pour half the remaining bottle of acid down the pipe,  The water level was much lower, so it went down past the L at the bottom of the hole in my bathroom. Then I mixed a ¼ cup of baking soda into a gallon of water and poured it down the hole. It reacted immediately. Lots of fizzing. I had to hold the plunger tightly over the pipe to keep it all from exploding out. If I had had a way of sealing off that end of the pipe, I think the resulting pressure would have blown out the blockage, but alas I did not, so sometime later that night, I pour the last half bottle down the drain, which still seemed to be blocked.

I awoke on Thursday, Day 4, to find the pipe still blocked. Mr. Sissoko came back and I promptly asked him how he had come to be at my house at just the right time the day before. I might have considered him an “Angel Unaware” except that I would have expected better plumbing from an angel. Seems there was a reasonable explanation. We had initially asked the pastor’s neighbor if he knew any good plumbers. Without our knowledge, he had contacted Mr. Sissoko and told him that there was a Toubab in desperate need of a plumber.

While I had been conversing with Mr. Sissoko, Emmanuel, my house worker, had started working on the pipe again with the long wire snake. Mr. Sissoko was convinced that the only thing to do was to dig down ANOTHER TWO FEET into the floor until we got to the L in the pipe. I was very reticent to do that.  Fortunately, at that moment, Emmanuel managed to wiggle the wire just right and the pipe was unblocked. I’m sure the acid had done its job and just needed a little help. That and some solid prayer.

I was fairly relieved that the toilet was unplugged. All that remained was to remount the toilet. This took all day. I had enough cement on hand, but had to go buy some plaster. Then I had to take Mr. Sissoko back to his friend’s house to get a big wrench. When they got the toilet back upright and cemented in place, it was a bit lower than it had been before, which meant that the pipes didn’t fit right anymore. One pipe had to be bent and another one cut and re-thread by the local welder. Eventually everything was back together. I paid Mr. Sissoko. The pipes were leaking some, but he assured me it would stop soon. This is a fairly common refrain, and oddly enough, they usually do stop in a few hours.

Not this time though. There was a steady trickle of water running across the bathroom floor and down the shower drain. I was worried that the cement and plaster wouldn’t dry properly, so I cut the water off at the street that evening. Friday, when I turned it on, it promptly begin leaking again. I was exhausted and couldn’t face another day of plumbing, so I decided to live with it until Monday.

Monday arrived. One week from the original incident. I made the decision to contact Mr. Sacko this time. It would help to mend fences with him. That and I didn’t want Mr. Sissoko back near my plumbing any time soon.  Mr. Sacko did a fine job, but we did have to go into town in my car to get some parts. This time, the pipes DID stop leaking after he left.

Thus ends the Tale of Two Toilets . . . almost. Fantasy #1 is unblocked, but doesn’t seem to handle toilet paper well, so I’m primarily using Fantasy #2. Two weeks after it was fixed, I noticed that it was running quite a bit. I climbed up on my chair to look inside the tank. These sorts of things normally just require adjusting the float valve slightly. Well as soon as I touched the float valve, water began squirting out of the pipe. The plastic nut had cracked. I was leaving town the next day, so I just turned off the stop valve, which worked for once. Upon my return, I had to go get Mr. Sacko, who did a fine job. This time, it only took two trips to the hardware store, and I discovered a different make of float valve. Perhaps this kind will hold up better. . . .

A Tale of Two Toilets - Part I

This is a tale that originally happened  back in 1999 in the first Malian house I would call my own. This story has been a favorite of many, so here it is, slightly edited and in 2 parts.

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I have a Malian friend who is fond of saying, “Le Toubab a douze métiers”, which translates roughly as “The foreigner has 12 professions.” He is astounded at the way we fearlessly attack various pursuits around the house: painting, carpentry, wiring, car repair, bicycle repair and occasionally even our chosen profession - linguistics and language learning. To the Malian, these domains each belong to a specialist and others shouldn’t venture into such areas. I’m not convinced that Westerners are innately more gifted in these areas, but we are brought up to be do-it-yourselfers AND we have a heck of a lot more tools at our disposition than the average Malian.

For a while, I thought that plumbing might be one of my twelve professions, but I have since decided it is most certainly not. Furthermore, I’m convinced plumbing is the Devil’s handiwork, since only someone who has sold his soul to the Devil could make pipes fit together and not leak. How this EVER works is a mystery to me.

Here follows one of the darkest plumbing nightmares I have experienced. It was a Monday as I recall, and the day started simply enough. I did some language analysis and then had a language lesson, made some trips into town for some errands, and was back home by 3:00 and was sitting at my desk working away on language study, when nature called - rather urgently, I recall. I made use of my front bathroom.

A Turkish Toilet, also known as a "squatty potty"

Before I proceed much further, I must pause to note that I am fortunate to have not one, but two toilets in my house. My colleagues moved into a house that had two Turkish toilets, which are nice porcelain structures that flush, but are missing one crucial feature - a seat. You put your feet on two raised porcelain steps and squat down. When my friends moved into their house, they asked the landlord to fix several broken things and added that they would like to have a sit-down toilet. He replied that he would repair what was broken and paint the place, but that they would have to pay for any “fantasies”  (like toilets). Thus, I feel honored to have two fantasies in my house.

Well, on this particular Monday, the fantasy in the master bathroom backed up in a major way. I had been fearing this would happen, since the week before I had poured a bucket of dirty water down the toilet. Unfortunately, there was a rag hiding in the bottom of the bucket. I watched in horror as it went down the toilet, never to reappear. I had been holding my breath for that week, hoping against hope that the inevitable would not happen. Well, it did happen that fateful day. The toilet started overflowing and running across the floor to the shower drain which is not three feet away. More water came up from a hole in the floor next to the toilet. I managed to get the water to stop, but not to go down in the toilet.

I went in search of my plunger, but it was too small for the rather large hole in the bottom of the toilet bowl. I decided to make the first of seven trips to the quincaillerie, French term for what we call the hardware store and the Brits inexplicably call the “ironmonger’s”. I came back armed with two bigger plungers, one for the bathroom, and one to replace the little plunger, now soiled, which I use regularly on my kitchen sink. When I got home, I had the difficult task of explaining to the neighbor Malian women what these odd sticks were for. Not an easy concept, if you’ve not familiar with a western toilet. Once inside, I made the discovery that these larger plungers were still too small to cover the massive hole in the bottom of my toilet. Needless to say, the Tidy-Bowl Man should steer clear of my toilet unless he gets a bigger boat. My efforts at plunging ended up having little effect except for getting toilet water all over the place.

At this point, I decided that perhaps the water in the toilet bowl would go down on its own if I left it. In the meantime, I determined that I’d better go back and take a look at Fantasy # 2. I had just returned that month from a year in the US. Upon my return, I discovered that this particular toilet was leaking considerably, so I had turned the water off. Now, I figured it was grand time to get it working. Fantasy #2, while still a sit-down toilet, is one of the varieties that has a tank situated on the wall high above the toilet. The user pulls a chain to flush it, and the water descends through a long pipe to the toilet. The tank on this one is higher than normal and for some reason, the seat is extra low. To reach the tank, I had to stand on a chair, the seat of which fit easily over the lower half of the toilet.

Float valve (or "ballcock"if you are British and looking for one of these at the ironmonger's)

As soon as I opened the tank, I saw two immediate problems. First, the metal rod on the float arm had rusted through. This happens every four months without fail, forcing the homeowner to buy an entire new float system. For some inexplicable reason, they make this metal rod, which by its very nature gets wet frequently, out of a metal that rusts very easily. The quincailleries here only seem to have one brand, so we’re stuck with it.

When I started adjusting the metal rod, the part of the floater that screws into the water pipe, broke off. Off, I went to the quincaillerie to get a new float valve. This was my fourth trip into town for the day. The people at Quincaillerie Diallo, my least favorite of all the quincailleries here, but the most well stocked, greeted me when I entered as “Bill Clinton” (who was President at the time and since I was American this was a natural association).  Needless to say, this appellation did nothing to improve my already frustrating day.

I decided I’d try to paint the metal rod on the new float valve with anti-rust paint. This meant I had to put off any plumbing activities until the morning when the paint had dried. I did manage to plunge/splash enough in fantasy #1 to get all the dirty water out of it.

            The next morning I thought I would be able to install the new float valve before my lesson at 10 a.m. Silly me. I immediately found that one of the existing metal nuts was broken. Off to 2 different quincailleries to get the parts needed. Oddly enough, I found out that one of the nuts is called a mamelon in French, which translates literally as nipple. This confirmed several deep-seated notions about the French, until I was informed that the correct term for these nuts in English is also nipple.

            After buying the nipple and another odd-shaped nut, I went back home and faithfully had my language lesson. That afternoon I tried my hand once again at plumbing. After several mishaps, I finally got everything together, but it leaked considerably, in spite of the Teflon compound I had put on the threads to insure a tight fit. The more I tightened the more it leaked. Eventually, the plastic part of the floater pipe, broke off, leaving me exactly where I had been the night before, except that when I tried to close the shut-off valve, the handle broke off and there was no way to cut off the water. This meant cutting off the water outside the house and passing the night without running water. My 2 barrels of extra water made this less of a hassle than it could have been.

The Great Toilet Fiasco - Day three. 

I concluded that plumbing was not one of my 12 professions and having conceded this, went in search of a plumber. My previous experiences with Malian plumbers had not been positive ones. The normal method is to go down to the local water and electric company and grab one of the plumbers who hangs out there waiting for work. No use trying to call a plumber - they’re not listed in the book, and I don’t have a phone anyway. If you did manage to call one, he wouldn’t have a car and even if he did, you wouldn’t be able to tell him how to get to your house since the streets have no names and the houses aren’t numbered.

However, I have never gotten very good plumbers from the plumbers pool in front of “Energie du Mali.” So I went to ask the pastor of the church if he knew of anyone. He asked his neighbor who mentioned someone down the street. We decided not to go get him, but instead went to the train station to find someone the pastor knew. This man, Mr. Sacko agreed to come at around 9:30. This gave me time for a quick run to the hardware store to by another “nipple” and a new cut-off valve.

When I returned home, it was 9:30 and a man was standing on my porch with a wrench, the only tool any Malian plumber ever comes with. (Well, there is a story, apocryphal perhaps, of a plumber that came to a missionary’s house armed only with a piece of string). Anyway, since he was there at the right time, I assumed he was the plumber we had contacted. Only later did I find out that this man was NOT Mr. Sacko, but Mr. Sissoko who had been sent by the pastor’s neighbor. I went all day assuming he was the one I had asked to come. Anyway, I let him and he quickly went to work on Fantasy #2. I figured it was best to get it working before attacking the blocked one.

It was quickly brought to my attention that I need to buy MORE parts, so we went off together to buy them. Back to Quincailerie Diallo, where they were kind enough not to greet me as Bill Clinton. Armed with more parts,  Mr. Sissoko managed to fix Fantasy #2 in an hour or so, though his first attempt leaked as much as mine had the night before.

Sometime around lunch on Day 3, Mr. Sissoko went to work on Fantasy #1, the one in the master bathroom. It was quickly determined that it couldn’t be unblocked. It would have to be removed. This would involve chipping the toilet up out of the tile floor. Did I have a chisel? No. Could I take him to his friend’s house to get one? Sure. Off we went in my trusty red Suzuki jeep through a maze of dirt streets and mud brick homes to his friend’s house. He wasn’t there, but we eventually got the chisel.

Back to the scene of the disaster. For several hours, Mr. Sissoko chipped away at the base of the toilet, aided by my house worker, Emmanuel.  A pile of cement and tile fragments formed in my bathroom and eventually, the throne itself lay on its side, its base cracked in several places and a few small pieces actually broken off. Did I have any superglue?

Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of “A Tale of Two Toilets”.

Just Sayin' and other Social Media tags

Okay, as a frustrated linguist, I am relegated to making observations on English (and sometimes French).

So I have noticed a few phrases that seem to be frequent ways to introduce postings of opinions or observations in social media.  Much in the same way that  "So this man walks up to a____" signals that a certain type of joke is on the way, these introduce witty or snide observations, usually humorous, and sometimes self-deprecatory.

 1. Note to Self: 

This is really anything BUT a note to yourself, especially if it is posted in a blog or a social media forum. Otherwise, why say it "outloud" for everyone to read?
Usually the intent is humor, often at ones own expense.
Could be a stupid mistake:

Note to self: Lid first; then turn on the blender".  

Note to self: never drop container of cooked couscous on the floor. (This just happened to me as I was writing this post). 

OR a poor clothing choice as in this example that I posted to Facebook along with the pic at right: 

 Note to Self: Don't wear these shorts with that cycling jersey, ever again. 

Or both:

Note to self: Don’t wear blue shirts to the Apple Store. 

And very occasionally, the "note to self" really is some sort of personal "pep talk".

Note to self: Stop being dependent on friends and trying to fit in. You'll only find yourself unhappy and feeling out of place.

2. That/the awkward moment when

These are more shared observations about something stupid you have done, but you feel that you are not alone in that. As with many facebook or twitter status posts, it is a way of poking fun at yourself, gaining empathy and reaching out to others all at once.There is an implied portion to this construction: "(Don't you just hate) that awkward moment when. . . "

 That awkward moment when you realize you 'replied to all' instead of just the sender.

 That awkward moment when you are dancing around and realize you are not alone and you try nonchalantly stop dancing.

 The awkward moment when your sarcasm is so advanced people actually think you are stupid. 
The awkward moment when you're denied a high-five.

 The awkward moment when you're left with a friend of a friend, and there's silence until the other friend returns.

3. Just sayin' 

This has two Facebook communities devoted to it. One of them has 82,643 likes and "2,155,627 talking about this". I don't know if that means there were 2 million posts with"Just Sayin". 

I am also not sure why the picture on their page has a coffee cup with MY NAME on it in addition to this useful phrase. Just sayin'.

This phrase seems to be a way to make some sort of critical comment and then not own it fully, to soften it somehow, in case someone is offended.

4. I don't mean to.... BUT...

I think this may be the most annoying of these, because the person writing this actually DOES mean to be that way, and is somehow excusing himself in advance.

I don't mean to sound racist but. . . (Okay, there were several of these when I searched Twitter and none of them deserve to be repeated). 

I don't mean to be rude, but. . . 

 5. Most. Overused. Use. Of. Punctuation. Ever.

Putting periods between every word in phrase is a fairly recent and I have to say, powerful, way of adding emphasis in a medium that is devoid of intonation and also context. Extra points for using ALL CAPS.

Best. Olympics. Ever.

Must. find. Starbucks.

SO. VERY. TIRED.

I have even seen one example recently where someone had periods between every letter: a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

That awkward moment when you realize your blog post ISN'T. NEARLY. AS. CLEVER you had planned. Note to self: I don't mean to be pedantic, but try to avoid this in the future. Just sayin'.

The Brothers Karamazov

I just finished reading "the Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I believe it came to my attention on a list of further books to read on Christian spirituality. And it was a classic and free on my e-reader. So I downloaded it and waited until I had a slot in my leisure reading time.

I have to say it was a hard book to get into. First of all, everyone has long Russian names, not one but two - a formal one like Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov and then a nickname, Mitya in the case of Dmitri. So you have to remember that Alexey Fyodoroitch Karamazov is Alyosha, and Ivan Karamazov is well, for the life of me I can not find his full name. 

Both Ivan and Mitya have loved Katya (Katherina) at various times. And both Mitya and his father Fyodor are vying for the attention of Grushenka (aka Agrafena Aleandrovna).

So it takes a long while to get into, but then at over 700 pages you have time to get to know the characters and once you do, then the plot finally picks up as well.

I have to say I found the writing style to be fairly non-linear and almost post-modern, with lots of looping around that made me think of the TV series "Lost". there were heavy hints that THIS piece of information is going to become very important in the future. Characters were introduced and you were given an initial (often unfavorable) impression of them and then later you had an entire chapter devoted to their backstory revealing much more complex personalities. As in Lost, you also had characters that came to a sort of redemption or bettering of themselves as the story played out. And you had at least one character who was saw people who were not there (the devil in this case).

The story is painted against the backdrop of Russia in the 1870s. Most of the characters are of the nobility but have interactions with "the peasants". Social change is afoot and people fear that. Socialism, atheism, . . .

One theme is that of community vs individualism and encroaching industrialization.

"All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light."

 The story is centered around the three brothers, Ivan, Mitya, Alyosha, each abandoned and neglected by their father in youth and eventually brought back into his sphere of influence. They are archetypical characters. Alyosha, the youngest, begins the story in a monastery. He has a strong faith, always believes the best of those around him and brings out the best in them. I found myself wanting to know more of his story.

Ivan, the oldest, is most like his father, selfish and also given over to atheism and the idea that "everything is lawful".

Mitya (Dimitri) is somewhere in the middle. He usually falls prey to his baser nature. He has never worked an honest day in his life and lives on handouts from his father and others, and bounces back and forth between 2 women, alcohol and wild schemes, eventually becoming involved in the central plot element - parricide, but did he do it and can he, as a person be saved?

There are great spiritual nuggets tucked away in the descriptions of the spiritual life of the monastery, and Father Zossima, who ends up being a side character. He describes the first stirring of his faith when at 8 years, he goes to mass for the first time:

 I remember to-day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my heart. (p.319)

 After Father Zossima dies, Alyosha dozes off while another priest is reading the story of the wedding at Cana. Bits of the story of Jesus turning the water into wine filter into his dream, where he sees Father Zossima at the banquet table at THE Wedding Feast, the Wedding Feat of the Lamb.

“We are rejoicing,” the little, thin old man went on. “We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests? Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast, he is tasting the new wine. ..."

Father Zossima invites Alyosha, in his vision, to lift his eyes to Him who is at the head of the table, but Alyosha is afraid.

“Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There they are bringing new wine. Do you see they are bringing the vessels....” (p. 403)

 What a rapturous picture of the Kingdom of Heaven, both on earth and above, with Jesus inviting people to the table and providing the wine of joy and gladness that is missing in our lives.

The book does bog down at points, but once you are into it, the story really pulls you along to the very end. It does suffer from the pacing so common in books written in the 1700 and 1800s when people sat indoors for months on end in the cold winter months, with nothing to do but read (and write) books with several volumes, and entire chapters devoted to side characters.

All in all, I enjoyed the book, the characters and the picture into life and society in Russia and a decent mystery and courtroom drama, as well.