Dr. Plumber

Some funny things that have happened lately.
We have been without a working sink or flushing toilets for a month. The well pump was fixed last week, but when we turned on the water to the house, many of the sinks and toilets still didn't work. Pretty disappointing. Between diapering, and attending to boils on kids, and welding, and working in the garden, I want to wash my hands pretty often. To be without a sink is a hassle. It's hard to feel like you really got the germs off.

An interesting cultural phenomenon here: Ntagatchans will talk to each other from ridiculously far apart—and at normal volume levels. It seems they have superhuman hearing. I've seen people talk to each other from 100 yards apart without raising their voices. Partly this is possible because it's so quiet here (very very few motors). And partly, I think, it's because in this hierarchical society, it's assumed that a lower person will always greet a higher person, and this it's the lower person's responsibility to make themselves heard. And, the lower person will intentionally stand quite far away—even twenty feet—on purpose. This is considered polite and submissive. The higher person can be as soft spoken as they choose. Also it's important that the lower person not be too loud, lest they be perceived as asserting themselves too much. The resultant effect for me is that in general people speak to me in a tone which is much to quiet for me to discern the nuances of a foreign language. I am constantly asking people to repeat themselves.

Believe me, when one is learning a language, not being able to hear your interlocutor (or read their lips) is an extreme disadvantage. When they talk to me from twenty yards away I just walk over to them. Or I just repeat “nzuri,” (fine) and “sawa” (OK) asseems appopriate until they stop. I don't know what else to do.

Yesterday I witnessed a funny example of this distance-talking. We let the manager know about the sink problem. At the time he was sitting nearby a water cistern, a 50,000 gallon underground concrete tank. The cistern is undergoing repairs so there were two men down inside it—way down inside it. Without getting up to walk to the access hatch of the tank (he was sitting about twenty feet away), the manager began having a conversation with one of the guys at the bottom of the tank. They simply began shouting back and forth to each other, the voice of the man in the bottom echoing sonorously. The conversation being held in a pigeon of English, Swahili, and Kuria, it was all the more incomprehensible to me. It was ridiculous! “Nanyo, who do you know who is a plumber?” Reply: “There's one working up at the hospital right now.” “Perfect!” And so it went. How they could understand each other I have no idea. Eventually someone took it upon himself to act as an interpreter, squatting at the top of the hole and shouting each sentence back and forth.

Unfortunately, the plumber is less skilled than I am at plumbing. So he didn't make much progress on the sink. His first suggestion was that we completely replace the entire plumbing system. Using this tack he wouldn't have to search out the problem and he would have plenty of income from a big job; this building has at least six bathrooms. Irritated with his advice, I decided to find the problem myself. That only took about ten minutes—it was a stuck valve on one of the pipes outside. When I fixed it, one whole bathroom and the kitchen began working. Rarely have I received such a hero's welcome as when I strutted into the kitchen to the sound of water gushing from the tap (pipe wrench in hand, so they would know it was me). Restoration of running water is a big victory around here.

As it turns out, the plumber isn't so bad as long as you tell him exactly what you want done. He is replacing the faucet on our bathroom sink right now. Hopefully we are just minutes from being able to wash our hands easily!