Just a normal day?

I could try and go back and describe the process of getting here to my new house, explain in detail about my flights or the first day of unpacking, but rather I am going to skip all of that and just tell you a little bit about my day today.

This morning I woke up to two women talking rapidly back and forth right outside my window at 6am. I just had to smile as I lay there, listening to their intense speech, wondering what in the world they were talking so strongly about at such an early hour.

Then my roommate and I had to go to the local hardware store to return a 3 meter piece of PVC pipe. She had misunderstood while talking with the worker. He said we need one ½ inch pipe. She thought he wanted a 1 ½ inch pipe. So I rode on the back of her motor bike with the long pipe in tow.

After coming home with the right size, a couple of local high school age boys came over and continued painting the inside of our house. They have worked for several days now giving all the walls a fresh coat of paint. They just had one room left to go but for some reason it took them 4 hours.

While they were doing that our neighbor was over installing the new sink we bought. After arriving I realized my new bathroom does not have a sink- no place to wash hands or brush teeth. The landlord had agreed to remodel the bathroom outside- put in a roof, working door, tile, western style toilet, shower and hot water heater. This would give us two functional bathrooms in our new house. I was impressed by the work and happy to see that they had finished it. One small problem- no sink. So my roommate and I had gone out the day before and picked one out. I drove my motor bike and she carried it home on the back.

Since my landlord was working in the morning he asked the other neighbor to come and get the project started. He is an older man who I have already become fond of. I sat and watched him work for awhile. He made a level out of a clear piece of pipe by filling it with water and looking at how it sat. While I sat there a cockroach startled me as it scurried across the tile by my foot. The teenage boy that was helping the old man saw my reaction, quickly reached down, picked up the cockroach by its antennae and walked it outside.

Then my other neighbor started calling through the front door. Before I knew it she had let herself in and was handing me a plate covered in brown paper. “Ikan!” she exclaimed. She had cooked us two fish and they were still hot. I thought it had smelled fishy when we had first gotten back from the hardware store. She apologized that there was no rice and was gone as quickly as she had come.

In the late afternoon the landlord, who is also my neighbor, came by to finish the work on the sink that was started in the morning. The first guy had just secured the sink to the wall and put in a few tiles as a backsplash. That was about all he could handle. This other guy is more of the expert. However, after watching him study the many pieces we had purchased to connect the sink to the water supply and to the drain it was apparent that he was a little less knowledgeable than originally thought.

So I sat nearby on the floor and watched. At some points I had to restrain myself from jumping in and giving my two cents about how I thought it should go together. It took him hours and hours. He improvised a little along the way- adding extra tape, melting pieces, and shaving things off. Even as the sun set and it turned dark he was still working. When he was almost done the power in our neighborhood went out and we scrounged around looking for a flashlight. Eventually the light came back on and he was able to finish. My favorite part was that when he was all done and it seemed like there were not any leaks and everything was good, he took some clear packing tape and wrapped it around a couple of times, just for good measure I am sure.

Oh what a day. Just a normal day in the kampung I guess.