Self-inflicted Water Woes

Our bathtub faucet leaks. From the looks of the hard water stain on the tub it's been leaking for quite some time. That gives us very little hope that our landlord will fix it.

So Andrew decided to self-diagnose our problem. In doing so he discovered that he has no idea how to fix a faucet and that there's a neat little knob by our toilet that controls the water pressure of the bathroom.

He was playing with that this morning and after he'd finished I tried washing my hands, but there was hardly any water pressure, so I started playing with the knob, as well.

Andrew stood by the sink, turning the tap on so that we could tell how high the water pressure was. I turned the tap looser. Andrew told me that there was no change. I turned the tap tighter. No change again.

"I'll go into the kitchen to see if there's any water pressure in there," Andrew volunteered.

A few minutes later I heard him holler something from the kitchen. It's just down the hall from the bathroom but I still couldn't hear what he said. So I walked to the kitchen to ask him.

"What did you say?"

"I said that there's no water in here, either."

"Well, that stinks." I sighed.

And then we prepared to go about our day, without water yet again.

When we'd gotten back from Road 9, after visiting a carpenter's shop, a fruit stand, and finding the underground tunnel to the other side of the tracks, we were pretty grimy. It's easy to get grimy in Cairo.

"Man, I wish I could shower," Andrew whined, "I'm so dirty!"

Perhaps we both just felt more dirty than usual because we walked through some raw sewage. At least, that's what I think it was. There were some pipes just outside of the tunnel on the other side where people had, no kidding, set out their goods--like fruits and vegetables and things--and at the end of the pipes was this little cement thing that looked like it used to be a pump but was really just spewing nasty smelling, thick, dark-coloured water everywhere.

Needless to say, that's not where we bought our fruit.

But we had to walk through a puddle in order to go anywhere from the tunnel so we braved it. And it was gross. I wanted a shower, too.

"Let's see if we have water now," I suggested.

So we walked into the bathroom and looked at our tub. That's how we test to see if whether or not we have water. If the tub is leaking, we have water. If it isn't, we don't.

It wasn't leaking. We still didn't have water. So we continued to live our life waterless.

Finally, just before dinnertime, Andrew decided that he'd check the "water pressure" tap himself.

He turned it. And the tub started leaking.

I had turned off the water for the whole apartment. And we left it off all day. Oops.