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. . . .