In East Africa there are two rainy seasons: the short rains in December and the long rains in March and April. This year the short rains were very sparse, but then some heavy rains followed in January, normally a dry month. Just before we arrived on Jan. 10 there had been serious flooding in several areas, with homes destroyed and about a dozen people drowned. Those rains caused backed-up water in the gutters of the tile roof to leak into our flat, too. There’s discoloration of walls and ceilings that still needs to be addressed.
And then—baffling everyone—more rains arrived in the past week, beginning with a short, intense shower last Wednesday evening and then returning on Friday evening in torrents. And our roof, unfortunately, was not ready for the challenge. It leaked through electrical fixtures in both the bathroom and the toilet room on Wednesday night. Then during the night on Friday things took a dramatic turn for the worse: water dripping from several places in the ceiling, water pooling on the floors, the toilet room light flashing like a strobe although it was turned off, and—at about 3 am—an alarming noise which proved to be half the ceiling of the bathroom falling into the tub.
In the morning we alerted the Daystar guest housing coordinators, who got several maintenance people to come and survey the damage later that day while we were out on a service project organized by the US Embassy and the American Women’s Association. Clambering around in the attic space, they discovered that the water tank—a necessity here, since the mains water doesn’t always flow—was deteriorating and leaking. So they shut off the supply, and for the weekend we had only one source of water in the house, the cold water tap in the kitchen, which for reasons I don’t quite get is connected not to the outflow from the tank but directly to the mains supply. So we’ve been boiling water in the kettle to do dishes, carrying buckets of water to flush the toilet, and using neighbors’ showers since Saturday. But on Monday, we were assured, a new tank would be installed and everything would be put to rights again.
Which it was, almost. The new tank is in place, has slowly filled up, and does not seem to be leaking at all. We now have water in the toilets and upstairs lavatories again. It was a remarkable job to observe, beginning with the mode of access to the attic: a wooden school table with a stool on top, from which you could just clamber up into the rafters. The old tank was a tall galvanized rectangular affair, and had several inches of brown sludge at the bottom—the source of an ugly brown line that had seeped down the wall last Wednesday. (We never drink the water until we filter it.) The new one is molded plastic, with a larger capacity (500 litres), but short and wide, designed to slip through rafters, which it did only after several attempts. All of this kept a crew of about 8 people busy from 3:15 until dark, about 6:45—though it was sometimes hard to know who was working, who was supervising, and who was just enjoying the entertainment.
This is getting to be a too-frequent recurring theme in our lives! In spring 2009 we found water leaking through the roof near the chimney of our house in Michigan and paid someone to patch things up. He assured us all would be fine, but the next rainstorm created a waterfall down the inside of the east wall of the house, and we hired a contractor who told us just what the problem was—the lack of a “bird’s beak” to divert water from the uphill side of the chimney—and repaired it, at considerable expense. This may have been part of the problem, but when it leaked in just the same places after the next rain, we finally zeroed in on the major source of the problem—deteriorated grout on the stone chimney—and had the entire chimney rebuilt above the roof line. It cost a fortune but, at last, solved the problem.
But water wasn’t done pursuing me. Just a week before departing for Kenya, I arrived at my Calvin office one morning to find a couple of inches of water on the floor and a cascade of water flowing from the ceiling down my bookshelves, ruining books on each shelf (some of my medieval philosophy, some of my peace studies books, some of my Kant, most of my Hume, etc.—whatever happened to be in the same vertical line). Even worse, the pool on the floor had turned a dozen boxes of stored files into a sodden mess. I spent several days discarding most of the papers and sorting out which books were salvageable. Just what I needed with one week to finish up a million things before departing for five months.
This time, we are concerned that the problem that was identified and fixed—the leaking tank—was only part of the problem. We have not received a satisfactory answer to why, if it was a leak in the tank and not the roof, the water stopped leaking into our bathroom after the rain stopped on Wednesday and started again on Friday about an hour after the second round of rain showers. We have posed that question to the Daystar maintenance personnel, the contractor, and the consultant. That is a good question, they have responded, and it has been carefully considered. But when they explain how it has been addressed, they start discussing it among themselves and switch to Kamba, and we don’t understand a word of it. Today, the crew is coming to replace the ceiling in the bathroom. In a month, when the long rains begin (or sooner if the weather keeps surprising everyone), we will find out whether they have really addressed the whole problem.
