Toilets and tofu

Part I: Toilets
 
Just as part of the "fun" of owning a home is fixing things yourself when they break, part of the "fun" of being a renter is relying on other people to fix broken things. And when you throw in language barriers and different cultural standards related to maintenance and repair, the situation can be even more interesting.

Our toilet with its new drainage pipe

When T and I got back from our vacation, one of the things that greeted us was a small pool of water under the drainage pipe of our upstairs toilet. It has always been clear that this toilet had problems in the past. The pipe from the toilet appeared to be made almost entirely of cracked caulking and was sticking out of a fairly substantial and disastrous-looking hole in the wall.

When the plumber saw the leak, he seemed to suspect the caulking-covered pipe sticking out of the wall. So what did he do? He covered the whole thing with a fresh, thick layer of caulking. Pipe-frosting. I cleaned up after him, put the bathroom back together, and watched for leakage...

Which, of course, there was. The leak wasn't coming from the drainage pipe; it was coming from something in the wall behind the toilet. Remember, this wall has always had a substantial hole knocked out of it, allowing for back-and-forth passage of all kinds of things, including water, between the wall and our bathroom.

So it was back to the apartment office to tell them the leak remained. I took everything out of the bathroom again.

How would you fix this problem? Cover the entire hole with caulking, of course, which is what the plumber took several hours the next day to do. I don't know much about caulking, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't designed for that.

The leak got worse. I took everything out of the bathroom again.

Yesterday, day three, the plumber returned and undid all of his beautiful caulk-patching by pulling out the toilet. He was in there making loud, violent-sounding banging sounds all afternoon. As he was leaving, I asked him "mezyan?" (That means "good"). He responded, "mezyan" and said something else in Darija, and I took it all to mean he was finished.

I cleaned up the bathroom, which took quite a bit of time and even more bleach.

And this morning, when I got up, I found water on the floor. This time, it is coming out of the little metal knobby-thing that you can see in the picture to the right.

I took everything out of the bathroom again.

(Of course, when I told a member of the housing staff about this, he said the plumber told him yesterday that he wasn't done with the work. Well, it's not like anybody needs to tell me that. I just live here.)

Fourth time's a charm?

Part II: Tofu

On a much happier note, I now have – thanks to my husband and some very attentive family members –a year's supply of vegetarian jerky. Go protein!