A Flood in Tanzania:

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So there I was, getting home from the luncheon at the British High Commission when I meet my security guard who says, “Mr. Robert... Problem.” His English is limited and my Swahili is poor, so you know this isn’t going to go smoothly...

Ends up, I walk into the house to find an inch of water in the house, from the kitchen to the front door. There had been a flood... Here’s how it happened...

Our kitchen sink had been plugging up quite often. The Fundi (Foon-dee) came to fix it only to realize that the pipes underneath the sink were dripping. He would have to come back with a new faucet and connections the next day. On Thursday he arrived and installed the new faucet and connections. Everything was great until Friday....

It seems that he didn’t connect the new pipes well enough and while we were out at the Volunteer Conference and Luncheon, the connection burst and the water gushed away as water does.

Our security guards, Joseph and Patrick noticed something was wrong when they saw water running out our front door and into the courtyard. They turned off the water supply until someone came home. That someone was me.

I walked in to find the mats at the front door drenched and a lake in the living room. There was about an inch of water everywhere. It didn’t make its way to the bedrooms. It just stayed in the common areas.

The guards grabbed squeegies and started the process of moving the water out the front doors. If we had carpets, etc. it would have been a huge mess. The clean-up process took an hour or so.

It was quite funny. No one stressed. Nothing really got damaged... But yes, I was brought back to reality quickly. When you look at the photos, the shininess of the floor isn’t the high gloss finish on our tiles. We don’t live that well... It is water.

By the way, the floors in this place have never been so clean.

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Comments

[Jeff]

Some things never change!
Glad to see you pitched in... By grabbing your camera! Your readers thank you!