In case we forgot that we were living in Africa...

I started this blog at the end of last week but forgot to post it once I was done:

I think God has decided that we’re getting a little too comfortable living in Africa. In order to remind us of what it is like to suffer a bit and to live uncomfortably, he decided to shut our water off.

We came home today to find that the water to our apartment has been completely disconnected. Honestly, my first assumption was that Eric forgot to pay our water bill, and I was slightly (ok, really) annoyed. All of us were sweaty and dirty and looking forward to cold showers, so coming home to ZERO water was really irritating. Not only could we not shower, but we also couldn’t flush the toilet. To not be able to flush a toilet that is used around the clock by 7+ people is a really horrifying proposition – let me just say that there are a lot of beans and strange things in our diet, if that helps with the mental picture at all. Anyway, as annoyed as I was, I figured the problem would be solved quickly as this has happened with the electricity before and because Kenyan’s generally pay their bills through a phone application called MPESA which delivers quick results.

Unfortunately, at soon as we got a hold of Eric we realized that the problem was not that he hadn’t paid the bill but that ILLEGAL shit had gone down. Apparently, Eric pays our water bill to the landlord, who then pays the water company, etc. Well our landlord is what I like to call undependable, which is a nice way of saying that he is a thief/cheater. Apparently this landlord has not given the water company our payment. This, however, is not the only illegal stuff that has gone down in this whole water debacle. The water company who came to disconnect our pipe is essentially required by law to give us a formal warning ahead of time if they have not received payment, but no such warning occurred. Instead they just came into the building and disconnected our particular pipe from the water tank, rendering us absolutely waterless.

So how did we deal with this maddening situation? Well, we broke the law right back. Eric and the boys have now rigged our water pipe (using some sort of tubing and extremely strong tape) so that we can pump water to our apartment. When I asked Eric if we could go to jail for this he said “yes definitely, but they started it.” Nice.

As of now, almost a week later, we are still illegally pumping our water, despite the fact that the water company has been paid. Eric said that it could take months for them to come reattach the pipe (they’re pretty much waiting for us to get desperate enough to pay them MORE – talk about corruption) and we obviously can’t wait around for that to happen, so I’m totally at peace with our decision to break the law. Take that Africa!