03-15-2010
The weirdest thing that has happened to me here in Paraguay to date happened today. That feels like a big claim to make—things get weird here—but its true. This teenage boy, Ricardo, was at my house for one of our informal English chats that we do a couple of times a week. We were chatting in English and Spanish when I saw that there was a puddle forming in my “guest room”. This is much more like storage space than anything else but was definitely originally constructed as another bedroom. Because of the crumbling walls I didn’t paint it and can’t put anything important there because of some leaks in the roof that have supposedly been fixed several times. It is not a very nice room. But I was still surprised to see the puddle. Did I leave the refrigerator door open and did my ice melt? No, I used the fridge a half hour before and it isn’t that hot today… But what is this? And why does it seem to be growing so quickly? And then I found it—the gushing water pouring out of my wall. There was a pipe that is partially exposed about five inches from the ground. It runs along the wall. I’ve never noticed it before, but it was definitely the culprit, and I realize a bunch of stuff is getting soaked. So Ricardo and I start moving some things out of the room—boxes filled with crafts supplies, a radio that has never worked, my friend’s suitcase that she left with me. I guess its worth noting that I’m swearing a lot. Not that I was stressed or worried, but mostly because I know nothing about plumbing, lots of cardboard I was saving to do charlas was getting drenched, and the water was coming steadily. Ricardo was very pleased to hear the words coming out of my mouth—words that before today he had only heard in movies.
I tell Ricardo we should turn off the water but that I have no idea where to turn it off. He glances into the front yard and tells me I don’t have a water shut off valve. (Note: My plumbing lingo/vocab is not impressive in English, Spanish, or Guarani. I may make up words in English, as I did in Spanish when explaining this issue.) Ricardo wants to know if he can borrow a book. I look through my bookshelf and hand him one of short stories to occupy him for the next 10 days while I can’t meet. This is how totally unconcerned he was. He leaves. I call my landlord, trying to explain just how quickly the water is coming into the house. Maybe my powers of persuasion are a little rusty, or maybe it’s the tranquilo lifestyle, but his response was that he would come by sometime tomorrow to take a look at it. Not useful. I literally at this point have what I described as a lake forming in my room. I go next door to talk to Marisa, who is the very same lady who helped me with the cats behind the fridge issue. She comes in, seems appropriately concerned about the water level, and though she finds the water shut off valve, cannot turn it off. She and I rack our brains for plumbers in the neighborhood. She looks for a number unsuccessfully, and then we go a few doors down for more neighborly help. I don’t know this neighbor’s name. This isn’t uncommon—there are simply too many names to remember and no one uses names when they talk to or about people here. We’ll just refer to him as Don Hero for the rest of the story.
Don Hero comes to my house and shuts off the water. End of story. No, just kidding. It doesn’t do anything. He shut off my water but it is still coming—and getting stronger still. (Well, maybe not stronger, but definitely not slowing.) He gets down on his hands and knees in the inch and a half of water that has gathered, cups his hands together, takes up some water, and brings it to his face. For a moment I think he is washing his face with it. Then I think maybe he is drinking it. Apparently he is smelling it. Very luckily for both of us, it apparently isn’t sewage. He asks me for a tool to break the wall open. I don’t actually question this request. He has always been very friendly, and though his children are slightly devilish, he doesn’t strike me as a destructive person. I hand him my machete, which was a gift from our trainer (on which my trainer wrote “Gender” on one side and “Environment” on the other in Spanish in an exercise in which we went around in a circle talking about various PC themes at the close of training). Don Hero seemed surprised by the writing on the machete, but started whacking away at the wall anyway, sending plaster flying in every which way and showing that the gushing water was actually coming from under the wall much further to the right. The water obviously continues gushing out. Marisa comes back to check on us. They speak in Guarani. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I fight back the urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation. Apparently he wants to know if this leak is in the same place where their (Marisa’s) bathroom is, since our houses are side-by-side and share a wall. Don Hero continues hacking away, trying to find the water source while Marisa stands by then goes to get her husband. I make jokes about becoming more popular being the only person in our neighborhood with an indoor pool. There is nothing else I can do but laugh. I have changed into my Crocs (note: this may actually be what Crocs were made for) and the water has gotten so deep that it literally covers them. I chuckle again. The neighbors turn their water off. (Though I only have water 3 times a day, they have another system that makes it so they always have water.) The water coming out of my wall slows to a trickle. I make another joke—I should have known this wasn’t coming from my pipe; I never get that kind of pressure! No wonder they think I’m weird.
So as we survey the damages and move some stuff in my main room to make space for the water that has spilled out into the house, my landlord gets there. (I called him a second time at some point during this and did a better job at stressing the urgency of the situation.) The landlord chats with the men in Guarani. I know what’s going on. It is decided that the neighbors will pay for someone to come over and fix my wall tomorrow morning. We exchange smiles, the landlord asks me random things in broken English as he always seems to do at the weirdest times. My water is turned back on (but has been turned off at the main water tank by this point) and I say goodbye to my landlord and his wife and teenage son. My landlord asks me if my neighbors are treating me ok, which I find almost offensive considering how wonderfully useful they had been for the past hour. We chat, I mention off-hand that I don’t especially want to push all this water out of my house with a squeegee. He tells me that I should just leave it, and that it will soak into the brick floor. Obviously.
Just as I’m about to start cleaning up, the neighbor father and daughter show up with a bucket and several brooms. Cleaning it up with them was so much faster than it would have been by myself. We finished getting the water up and the father obviously wanted to look around, since he had never been in the house while I lived there, and quite possibly had never been inside, though they had lived next to it for 16 years. (In Paraguay if you go to someone’s house, you very frequently just stay on the porch or patio—the house can be considered very private space.) I welcomed him to look around and chatted with his daughter, laughing about how my landlord thought I should just leave the water to dry itself. I keep my shower supplies up high on a board that I can barely reach. He came out of the bathroom grinning, apparently very amused at the arrangement.
I spoke to a friend just after they left, telling him the story, and several things occurred to me. I realize that my reaction to laugh at such a ridiculous situation is maybe a good one and that on a different day I could have reacted quite differently. I have found that having a sense of humor about these sorts of things helps me maintain my sanity, but that also it is impossible to do so. A couple of months ago I had one of those weeks that everything had gone wrong. Some projects weren’t going over well, things just didn’t seem to be going my way, I kept being sick… and then I found out I had head lice. And it was just the absolute last straw. But then today literally half of my house was completely flooded and it is one of the more amusing things I’ve ever seen. And I’m lucky…I’m lucky that I was here in the house when it happened. I cannot imagine getting home at the end of the day or after a few days out of site to a completely water logged house! And I’m lucky that my neighbors are wonderfully curious, open, helpful, and just plain neighborly! What kind of baked good best says “Thanks for busting my wall apart with a machete, finding the huge water leak, and then helping me bail out my living room”?
No comments:
Post a Comment