This week, I walked on water. When I came home from work on Tuesday, I found that an intermittent drip from the toilet’s cistern had morphed at some stage during the day into a fast, constant leak. A stream of water had meandered its way through the bathroom and gently waterfalled over the bathroom step to form a great lake in the living room. Out came my non-absorbent mop, as I tried to capture several litres of water. A bit of jimmy rigging of the toilet with our ever helpful electrical tape (it’s duct tape’s little brother) and the leak was temporarily sorted out. Our landlord promised to send a qualified plumber the next day to sort it all out. The plumber came. He clinked and clanged in the bathroom for half an hour before leaving with a wave and assurances that all was well. 6 hours later and several more litres of water on the floor later and I had lost confidence in the plumber. Round two with the plumber was a little more successful, as we have had a non-leaking toilet for 3 days and counting. After the plumber, came the handyman. He outfitted my room with a fan and put up a mirror in my bathroom, both of which were welcome additions to the apartment. In the wee hours of that same day, I was woken up by a large crash. As I swam my way out of sleep, I tried to determine if the noise was a product of my mind or reality. Sadly, it was reality. The mirror fell off the wall. It answered the age old question of if a mirror falls off the wall when no one is there, does the shattering of the mirror make a sound. There was nothing we could really do it about, other than laugh at this rather fitting end to our household improvements.
Along with all our household fix-it woes, I had a wave of culture shock this week. Symptom one was the unreasonable anger I felt people’s inability to enter/exit a dalladalla in a proper fashion. Proper being waiting in a line until everyone gets off the dalladalla before trying to get on, rather then just going for it the moment the dalladalla stops thereby causing a log jam at the door. I found it very frustrating that when I held back in a very Canadian fashion to let people exit the dalladalla, people would push and bump their way past me in an attempt to get in. My dalladalla anger quickly transmorphed into a general annoyance with the world at large, which was heightened by the “mzungu, mzungu” calls of the toktok drivers stationed near the apartment. Toktoks are small, three-wheeled vehicles, each painted a primary colour. A toktok can hold a driver and two passengers and, generally, it is hired for a short trip. Mzungu, of course, means white person. An extended phone call home to vent in my sister’s sympathetic ear, a quick run on a bumpy treadmill and the annoyance started to abate. I’ll wager that I’ll experience a few more swells of cultural shock while I am here, but for now all is back to normal.
Along with all our household fix-it woes, I had a wave of culture shock this week. Symptom one was the unreasonable anger I felt people’s inability to enter/exit a dalladalla in a proper fashion. Proper being waiting in a line until everyone gets off the dalladalla before trying to get on, rather then just going for it the moment the dalladalla stops thereby causing a log jam at the door. I found it very frustrating that when I held back in a very Canadian fashion to let people exit the dalladalla, people would push and bump their way past me in an attempt to get in. My dalladalla anger quickly transmorphed into a general annoyance with the world at large, which was heightened by the “mzungu, mzungu” calls of the toktok drivers stationed near the apartment. Toktoks are small, three-wheeled vehicles, each painted a primary colour. A toktok can hold a driver and two passengers and, generally, it is hired for a short trip. Mzungu, of course, means white person. An extended phone call home to vent in my sister’s sympathetic ear, a quick run on a bumpy treadmill and the annoyance started to abate. I’ll wager that I’ll experience a few more swells of cultural shock while I am here, but for now all is back to normal.
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