Water Woes
It's been cold lately. Our apartment is often alot cooler than it is outside, but there's often a breeze so it's not much warmer. We live in a cement apartment building on the south side, which means that during the winter we do not get any sun.

For the past three months we have had difficulties with water. Fortunately they have not affected our supply or use of water. But they have caused some frustration. The first problem is still on-going and our neighbors, whose problem it really is, are not affected by it. Our apartment building has 12 flats in it. We are flat #12 (in case you wondered) and are on the top floor. We share a floor with flat 11. Flats 9 and 10, which are said to also be on the third floor are half a story below us, which means that their roof is in the middle of our wall. Our roof holds a number of water tanks (because the city water is only on from about 3 AM to 12 PM and so people have storage tanks for the time water isn't supplied by the city) and most of the tanks are directly above our bedroom. Our neighbors' tank overflows daily. They have a bouy in it that should signal the city water to stop filling the tank when it is full; but it doesn't work. For the greater of 2 months, we would hear a cascade of water landing a little above our ears at some awful hour, like 4:00 AM until we woke up around 6:00. They tried to fix it but it still runs, thankfully now, only starting the cascade at 6:00 instead of when we are sleeping. The neighbors whose tank it is, live below us and are not the ones receiving the water fall on top of them. In moments of weakness, we have contemplated routing the water from the overflow pipe into their windows so they are affected by the water. But we haven't and have tried to go through the proper complaint channels--the commission of the building.

Our second water problem lasted a few days. We got new neighbors in the flat whose roof joins our wall. He did alot of remodeling, including working on his tank, located above our bathroom. However, somehow, he hooked up an empty tank which, also had overflow issues. But instead of being limited to a waterfall outside the wall, the water began raining in our bathroom. The mass of water leaking also caused a small piece of cement to fall off our ceiling. Considering that he was in the midst of remodeling and seems to be a responsive, responsible sort of man, he fixed it in a few days. I think the ceramic tiles in our bathroom are still drying out because a number of them are still discolored from the water and the grout between them has bubbled.

Our third water problem is hopefully getting fixed this week. The only source of hot water in our apartment was a small electric shower head, frequently informally known as a "widow maker"--makes sense water + electricity... We have had a number of problems with our widow maker and had several electricians in to fix it. Most recently, we have replaced the heating element, only to have the water either scald or be cold. So we had another electrician in to work on it, who said that it wasn't wired properly, in fact there were several inches of exposed wire, taped to the metal tube holding the shower head with electrical wire. So he fixed the wiring and for some reason, then after showering in pleasant temperatured water for about 3 minutes the breaker would blow. We got fast at showering! Then once when Joel was showering he heard a POP! and saw sparks. That was the end of our using the shower head.

This week, a plumber is going to install a water heater--a geyser, as they call them in South Africa, I think we call them a hot water heater in the States. I'm so ready for it. Like I said it's cold, like in the 50's F in the morning, which does not make taking a bucket bath pleasant.