Raaaaaaaaaaain!

The weekend was dreary. Overcast, cool, breezy - admittedly a refreshing change from the hot, oppressive summer sun - but dreary all the same. Yesterday I walked to Spar (the grocery store down the street) with Blair, the World Teach volunteer who's now living with us, and predicted rain.  It felt like rain, smelled like rain... but as of sunset yesterday, still no rain.

Yesterday evening I wound myself up and stressed myself out over stupid shit and as a result I laid awake well into the wee hours of the morning.  Sometime around 2 am I heard the distant rumbling of thunder, and a couple hours later (yep, still awake!) I heard the joyful, blissful sound of raindrops splattering on the leaves of the bush outside my window.  I thought maybe I was imagining it, in my state of exhausted insomnia, so I ventured through the kitchen (where I met a large cockroach who seemed as startled by me as I was of it - tis the season for cockroaches!) to the back patio, where raindrops were indeed falling on the concrete.

Since I didn't sleep even a single wink, I got a jumpstart on the day, had a big cup of delicious coffee (thanks again, Mr. Dix!) and left for school about 10 minutes earlier than normal.  The walk to school was beautiful.  There's something about the smell of spring rain - especially the first rain of the season - and I was filled with a nostalgic happiness and peace that I wasn't expecting.  It didn't rain too much - enough to soak the top several inches of sand - but it made the morning delightful. I arrived at school before everyone else (except a couple enthusiastic learners) and snapped some photos of the peace and quiet (with my super crappy camera).  

Unfortunately, I realized after the school was full of learners that there was a fingerprint dead center on my lens. 

It was during my walk to school that I realized that my blog posts are about to go from updates to reflections on the last two years.

As my learners like to say, the time is running. 

I've done a good job of denying the coming end to my service.  I have, in fact, succeeded in pushing my COS date back 3 weeks in order to visit a couple other volunteers and help them with gardening workshops at their sites.  Several Group 30ers have already COSed and gone back to Americaland, including my very good friend Debbie.  And so went the going away:

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I have not yet exploded for lack of talking to her.

Before independence, when the Ministry of Education offices were still part of the white school in Gobabis, the school's superintendent lived in the house where we live now.  Since independence, the house has been under Ministry of Education control, but didn't become a volunteer dwelling until 2008.  Since volunteers moved into the house, there have been leaky taps.  Taps that leak, alot. Liters and liters and liters of water, everyday.  For 2 years I've been trying to get the Ministry of Works to come and fix them, but the issue has always been that they don't know where the water shut-off for the house is, and so can't take the taps apart to fix them.  


I suspected that this issue of not knowing where the shut-off for the house was would become problematic when one of the taps blew off or got stuck in the ON position.  So it happened to Martin one morning that the hot water decided not to turn off, and the tap had to be hammered closed to get the water to stop.  We still don't have hot water in the shower.

Somehow I've managed to make it this far without indoor plumbing being an issue, leaky/dysfunctional taps aside.  That is to say, I've had hot/cold running water inside my house (except in the shower) nearly every day since I moved in in November of 2009.   This all changed at the end of the August holiday.  Our water kept going out in the mornings and on the weekends.  After too many running-water-less mornings, I wondered if the school or the Ministry of Education wasn't turning the water off at night and on the weekends to conserve.  I was partly right.  Our water comes from a big reservoir tank that supplies the school and our house, and the fill shut-off is broken, so even after the tank is full of water, it continues to fill, causing overflow.  They've been filling the tank everyday, but by the next morning, before 8am, the water's gone.  On the weekends, the water is gone by Saturday and doesn't come back on till Monday.


What does all this mean?  It means that after 2 years of not fetching water from an outside tap, we're now fetching water when the reservoir tank empties.  

The best part of the story, though, is that the tank is out-of-normal-working-order until further notice because:
1. The Ministry of Works guys were first too afraid to climb up the ladder to the top of the tank.
2. The Ministry of Works guys were then too afraid of the bees that live under the tank to climb to the top of the tank.
3. The Ministry of Works guys will have to get into the tank and swim in it in order to fix whatever's wrong with the automatic filler.

I'm about to offer to climb up there, bees and swimming and all, and fix it myself.

I'd like to leave you with a cheesy 80s tune.  Every time it rains, I can't help but sing/hum/whistle this song.... it's so catchy!  :)