This morning Malin and T-man went into town to sort some things out leaving me home alone. Alone for the 2nd time in 3 days! Only one thing to do when you're home alone, bang the music up loud and do the dishes in your underpants.
Malin came back earlier than I had expected but luckily the noisy front gate was a perfect alarm to prevent any embarrassing situation. We sat and had lunch and talked about African workmanship.
One of the best compliments I can say about most of Africa is that their ability to make something out of nothing is quite remarkable. I mean this in a, "give an African some metal, 5 screws and a piece of chewing gum and he can fix a JCB" kind of way as opposed to making a huge argument over who's pile of tomatoes is the neatest.
This is a skill that I have had to practice due to multiple broken racks but luckily i've inherited it from my dad.
Unfortunately what can be said for their ingenuity of fixing things can not be said for their ability to build things properly in the first place. Myself and Malin looked around the house and we couldn't see anything built properly or with any decent level of "finish" at all. Team Norway had asked the house owner to sort some things out like painting and the odd broken door before they moved in but nobody arrived for a long time and the guy that did arrive, did a terrible job.
Its funny sometimes but we both agreed if we were going to buy our own house in Africa then we would spend alot of time project managing and telling them to do it again. In the current house for example, the tile pattern gives up halfway down the hall, one door still has writing on it (under the paint) from when it was used in a school, there are random holes in the roof covered by chipboard, the cooker gives you random electric shocks when it chooses and the paint job has ran, dripped and splashed everywhere. My particular favourite is where Malin found a huge daddy long legs that was painted half white as it was sat on the skirting board when the guy was painting it. Their laziness and poor attention to detail is clear to see throughout most of Nakuru which sometimes can give you a laugh and sometimes you have to ask yourself, "how is that legal?" I guess the answer to that is, this is Africa!
After our lighthearted gripe it was time for a saturday football triple bill. The football was good but throughout the football and for the whole time I've been here, the cistern in the hallway toilet was dripping really loudly. I never used to use it but ever since Philip the German broke the toilet seat in "my" en suite i felt it was safer to use the hallway toilet. Annoyingly it takes ages to fill up as well so I thought I would earn my keep by having a look at it and seeing if I could improve the flow.
I touched the pipe connected to the cistern with the lightest of touches and the thing broke in my hand and in true TV style, proceeded to pour water all over the bathroom. Luckily the pressure is extremely low so we stopped the water before we had a flood on our hands.
Typical I thought! And it only justified mine and Malin's earlier conversation of shoddy workmanship! Now its fair to say that that toilet is out of order till I can find a better connector and I will just have to risk getting a pinched behind from the cracked toilet seat in "my" en suite.
There you have it, that was basically my day. A joke at life, football and then toilet issues, somedays nothing changes...
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