Irony

Irony can be a funny thing.

This weekend, we went to stay at the Guest House at St Philip's College in Kongwa, to enjoy some family time (to see Kongwa Guest House, see previous visits: May 2012 and 2010). We had a great weekend spending time together and enjoying the full-board option this time, with delicious meals prepared by a lovely lady named Hawa (which is Swahli for "Eve"- and guess what her twin brother is called...? Adam :-))

On Saturday evening, the college started to have problems with their water tank. This meant there was no water in any of the taps from Saturday evening inwards. There was still rain water stored in outdoor tanks from the previous rainy season, which was great for drinking, boiling or cooking, but washing was a luxury. "O, don't worry", we told our hosts cheerfully, "When we get home we can have our showers!" So we opted to stay dirty and dusty and happily enjoyed our last morning at Kongwa, before returning home to Dodoma after Hawa's tasty Sunday lunch of beef and rice.

Just before 2pm, I put the key in the lock back in our MAF home and opened the front door, expecting a clean home with the option to shower before visiting friends across town for a birthday celebration- but this is the sight that met my eyes:

I was most surprised to see this great puddle of water spreading out across the lounge floor! Hastily, I paddled through the water to see how far it reached into our home.

This is what I discovered:

 All 3 bedrooms had water covering the floors and several items were soaking wet, like Ben's soggy sandals!  Mosquito nest trailed in the murky flood water and the place smelt damp. I was very sad that my wonderful Union Jack "Keep Calm" storage box was ruined after absorbing so much water, including several of the books I had kept inside.
The water spread across the entire house, filling the bathroom areas, right through the kitchen and out the back room to the back door:

Cupboards had retained water, with the contents of drawers and bottom shelves needing to be be pulled out, wet and dripping. Amazingly, the water had not reached any of our electrical equipment, computer equipment or into the food larder and had not yet spread as far as the sofas or the children's very full floor-level bookcase in the lounge- this was all a huge relief!

Now the clean-up job had to begin, with help from fantastic neighbours who made themselves available and really put some muscle into Operation Mop-Up!

 The lounge and patio were transformed into drying-off areas- what a mess!

After all that work, we were even more in need of showers! Yet we had quickly discovered on our return home that we had absolutely NO water in our house at all! On further investigation, it transpired that the entire compound had had no water since Saturday evening and that the water tank for our houses was completely empty!
Double irony: not only could we not take those expected showers that we had so cheerfully anticipated from a dry Kongwa, but we came from one waterless situation to another waterless place, with a flood to greet us on our arrival!!

It was a bit of a mystery as to how we could have a flood in our home in such a dry place! Gradually we pieced together the reason for our flood... When we had left on Friday afternoon, all the water for our MAF compound had been switched off. We had all gone to use the bathroom one by one before our journey- and one of us had unwittingly left the bathroom tap in the "on" position, since no water was coming out.

We merrily departed, but sometime on Friday evening the water had been switched back on- and flowed freely out of our bathroom tap- and on- and on- right through the night and far into the day on Saturday! There was so much water, it must have poured freely out of the small sink and filled up our house.

However, on Saturday evening, next door had a severe leak in their water pipe, losing litre after litre of precious water before anyone realised- and by then it was too late: our water tank at MAF had run dry! All the houses on our compound lost their water supply- and our busy tap was halted mid-task in its unfortunate flooding of our home! This was an annoying inconvenience for all of our neighbours- but a very happy situation for us Parkers, since the flood was halted!

 We are so thankful that the water was stopped when it was, lessening the impact of the low-level flood in our home. We were therefore quite happy to tolerate our stinking toilets that could not be flushed, a filthy floor that cannot be mopped with clean water, a sink-full of dirty dishes that cannot be washed, the dank mountain of soggy clothes, towels, toys and sheets that need to be washed after sitting in dirty water for much of this weekend and our smelly selves that we have attempted to wash in rationed amounts of bottled drinking water, purchased last night at the shop down the road! All this is a small price to pay when we consider how much more we could have lost in our home if the MAF water supply had not run out when it did! As I was saying, irony can be a funny thing...