Water, Laundry, and the Rats of Block D

It's been too long since I last posted anything on this blog, so I will be catching up a bit in the next few posts. We've had some interesting challenges here at Appelsbosch. The staff taking care of the grounds here have done an outstanding job, make no mistake, yet we do have challenges. Water is a bit intermittent here. Last month we had a 2-day period without any at all, but usually its a matter of the cold water drying up for a day or so at a time. That's a bit weird to me because back home in the U.S. we normally lose hot water because the water heater is not functioning or both cold and hot simultaneously because the water source is cut for some reason. I have never been in a place where the cold water will quit and the hot water still runs freely from the tap. I don't understand how the water system works in South Africa. I suppose I could ask a few questions and find out, but I kind of enjoy the puzzlement of it all. Somehow I feel like if I understood it, it wouldn't be quite as wonderfully odd anymore. And perhaps the shrieks coming from the showers where my family and friends (self included) are bathing with only scalding hot water would not seem quite as comical.

I think I've talked already a little about the laundry. Well, I'll talk about it a little bit more. When the cold water stops, so does the laundry. There is some weird thing about not running the hot water to the washing machines when the cold water is off, because of back filling the cold water tank with hot water - I don't know!? Anyway, bucket filling the washers with hot water becomes the only solution. Yet there are concerns that if we use too much hot water in the washing machines we may run out of water altogether and not have any water left to bucket flush the toilets with. (The toilets are also connected to the cold water system and quit flushing when the cold water stops running.) Interesting, huh? Incidentally most of the sinks we've seen in South Africa have separate faucets for hot and cold water, like the one in my grandparents old mill house. I'm not sure why the combined hot/cold faucet idea has not caught on here more in recent years. The weather also makes the laundry a challenge as it is typically very damp here. Having a full day of sun is a departure from the norm. I hang all of our laundry on indoor lines and hope it dries in a couple of days. Its very smoky sometimes outside so hanging the clothes outside sometime means having to wash them again to get the smoke smell out.

In mid November with the onset of summer we had a little bit of trouble with rats in our building (Block D). (Jenny and the girls in the hospital office on campus here had had a rat eating their snacks and chewing things like backpacks and phone cords in the night a couple of months earlier. They had resolved the problem with poison as there were seldom any children around the office.) In November I almost stepped on a rat in our building entering a dark shower room on our floor, so I decided to try and eliminate them. To be honest, they are kind of furry and cute, but nobody I know, self included, wants to share their living space or the living space of their children with rats. I acquired a couple of rat traps and baited them with cheese and peanut butter and set them out one evening before community meeting. After the meeting, with Joey's hiking stick in hand, I entered the same room where I had seen the rat earlier and found the rat again roaming around. After closing the door it had escaped though earlier, I put the stick into action. I found no morbid sense of pleasure from the encounter, rather it made me a bit sad. But the problem of rats in the building was one step closer to being resolved. Another rat had entered one of my traps while we were out, so I had our friend Miriam take a photo. I was later named "The Great White Rat Hunter" by a colleague of ours after he had seen the photo. Later the same night, another rat found a trap and took the bait. I had buried three rats by morning. After that, there were one or two rat sightings and one or two other folks setting traps. I haven't heard of any more sightings of rats in the building in a couple of months. Perhaps they decided that the hope of finding food in our building was not worth the risk and have moved on.

We had another rat leave our building in December. This time it was a much loved stuffed toy rat of Bethany's named Theo. Theo was Pom-Pom's friend. I blogged a couple of years ago about Pom-Pom. She is maybe a donkey that we think might have been an air freshener earlier in her life before she arrived in the boutique on the ship where she was claimed by Bethany. Theo, the small stuffed rat with magnetic paws, had left his house in a window sill near Pom-Pom's window sill flat (pictured below) in Bethany's room. There was also at least one small suitcase packed, perhaps shared, between the two stuffed animals and they were off on vacation just before Christmas with the Rolland family to points North of here. Well Theo, unknown to us, apparently fell out of the car at a petrol station in Swaziland. By the time we realized he was missing that night, we were far away and Theo was clearly on his own. There was much sadness at his loss, yet we hope he has fared well in his new country. Since then, a small rhino (pictured below) has taken up residence in Theo's old place. Such is life, I suppose; things change. I can't help wondering if Theo's disappearance had something to do with the way I had treated his rodent kind. Anyway, the rats are gone, three into eternity, some unknown number to greener pastures near Appelsbosch, and one wandering around Swaziland perhaps in the care of another loving child. Farewell beloved Theo.

John