Cornishman in Africa: African Curved Ball

The flow of life in Africa has its own special pace and direction, things will happen, but no matter what you as an outsider to do try and influence this, it will continue to wind on down its own course at its own pace.

You may believe that you have made a breakthrough and the project that you are working on has taken on a new lease of life and in fact you are going to complete ahead of schedule. Then Wham! Something that you thought was set in stone, totally guaranteed, turns around and smacks you in the face. It lets you down so spectacularly you are now going to finish two months late at best.

It’s what a very good friend of mine described as the African curved ball.
But that is life in Africa and if you cannot deal with it you should not be here. You just do all you can to deliver your part of the deal, to the best of your ability on time, then deal with the rest, without exploding.

There is a new water main going in where I stay to serve all the cottages. The old one was put in when there was just one house here and has been added to ad hoc as new cottages have been built. So the half inch pipe is not really adequate when eight people all want to shower at the same time. (not all in the same room I hasten to add)

So a master plan was devised, the trenches dug. (This was another great thing that Rolf got a lot of stick for.) and the pipework and fittings bought. The main pipe was going to be quite a large expense so as a money saving measure an old 3 inch plastic irrigation pipe was used. This would be fine but this pipe had half inch holes every meter. But never mind, lots of glue was bought and lots of patches were made. It was at this point that I realised there was just a slight chance that there was room here for the old African factor to creep in there and turn this good idea into a disaster.

The job was to take a week and it was all going to start on Monday. We were informed that there was a chance that we may experience some disruption to our water supply. (African understatement) Well Monday came and went. Unlike the plumber. On Tuesday he pitched up and started making connections. The guys who work here had dug all the trenches, laid all the pipework in said trenches. They were now feverishly sticking patches on the seven million holes along the length of the main pipe.

The water was to be turned off at 07:00 each morning then back on again at 17:00 which is fine as I get up early have a shower and am gone to work by that time in the morning and back after that in the evening. All the other residents have similar routines with no one being here during the day, giving the plumber and his team a clear run at the day.

The progress of the work was steady (Polite for slow.) and at the end of the first week the first cottage was nearly ready to be connected, unfortunately not with water, just the pipework.
After returning from work each and every night to no water and much bemoaning of this fact, we were each given a hosepipe to connect our houses with water and we managed like this. The colour of the water was interesting. And the fact that whatever had chosen to seek refuge in the hose pipe over night often came back to join you on your toothbrush in the morning. Which is always interesting when you are half asleep and thrust a tired bedraggled exotic African insect into your mouth first thing in the morning it makes for a steep waking curve.

After three weeks all the houses that are occupied were connected, the trenches were gone, all backfilled over the new pipework. The place was looking almost back to normal. It had been a long hard three weeks and the plumber and his merry team just wanted to go home. It was 17:30 on Friday afternoon, the final connections were made at the base of the fifty foot water tower and the water turned on.

Now I have never been to any of the American national parks but my brother Adrian, tells me that Yellowstone is particularly impressive. Huge gouts of water bursting from beneath the earth’s surface throwing thousands of gallons of water hundreds of feet in the air. (You know exactly where this is going don’t you)
Spectacular does not begin to scratch the surface of beginning to describe the spectacle that unfolded before our eyes.

As often on Fridays after work we were gathered at the bar beside the dam. We could hear it coming, not comprehending exactly what it was at first, then realisation dawned upon us and we all went to investigate.

The plumber had probably opened one tap somewhere as a token gesture to vent the system, then dropped the contents of a ten thousand litre tank down a three inch main, from fifty foot. The hissing of air came first as it was compressed, then pops and cracks as the air had nowhere to go and was being hotly pursued down the pipe by the angry water. Then it came, water erupted from the ground in spouts every twenty meters or so, exploding into the air in a selection of gushes squirts and fountains depending on the size of the orifice it had burst forth from. The amount of topsoil that was moved down the hill, in its self would have been a major feet of engineering on any normal day.

The plumber worked till midnight to get our hosepipes reconnected so we had water again.
Another two weeks have since elapsed, the holes and cracks in the main have been fixed and all the houses are connected up to the new main line.

Now here’s the irony of this whole thing. This work started because there was not enough water pressure, guess what, there is still not enough water pressure. They have to keep at least four taps running constantly watering the gardens so the main pipe does not burst again.
So when your next water bill comes through from South west water, don’t feel quite so bad about it. Or I’ll send my plumber round.

Denzil Bark.