Never Rely on Your Plumbing Expectations

We in the 21st Century living in a developed Country are totally, totally spoiled. Just ask anyone who lives in a developing Country.

Better still; try living in one yourself for some time rather than just passing through as a tourist living in 5 star luxuries.

It was 20 years ago that I lived in Malaysia for 3 years. I loved living in Georgetown on Penang Island. The people were beautiful, the scenery breathtaking and the food from the Mukan stall’s delicious and cheap.

Some of the backstreets though where the poorer people lived and survived were not always so delectable or pleasant. The open “Mony drains” were either so deep you would think they were dug out by a miner, or so shallow they were virtually useless. Mony drains were short for monsoon drains due to the tropical downpours that came through every 3 months as the monsoon passed over on its way south then on its way north again.

Now this is where I really appreciated plumbing. We, of course, being among the blessed elite, had ‘normal’ plumbing in our house with running water.

The difference was that this water was released into our outside “mony drain” that ran around our house and into a larger drain which ran into a larger drain etc until it ran out to where ever was the great meeting place for all mony drains.

Every week our wonderful, cheerful gardener came with his tin of ‘goodies’, hard scrubbing brush and scrubbed our drains for us.

There was one outside tap for use in the garden and it was located at the front of our house. On this tap we had a long hose that reached around the back of our house. Yes, you’re right, Nothing unusual about that.

We lived in a cul-de-sac with 3 houses. The last house had a really beautiful garden with a very attractive spirit house out the back. If I had been an ancestor, I would have been honoured to have lived there but I was a neighbour instead.

But as neighbours, we had a problem that went beyond different languages.

Their gardener raked the leaves off their perfect lawn and burned them in front of our house. Often long after our Amah Devi had put the washing on the line to dry.

Because it ‘got smoked,’ she used to bring it in and re-do it, which really wasn’t remotely fair.

We asked nicely, we asked again, and again and again. We spoke with the owner of the house, his wife, the mother-in-law grandmother, the gardener many, many times. We even had a solicitor write a letter to them in Bahasa requesting that they stop causing us this problem.

But they continued to light the fire to burn the leaves directly out the front of our house.

This particular day I came back from walking the kids to the school bus and they were out the front about to light the fire again. I approached them and asked them not to and pointed to the washing hanging on our line. It was the grandmother and the gardener and she was telling the gardener to ignore me and light the fire. He continued to hesitate because he was a kind hearted man and knew he was causing extra work for Devi.

I pointed to the tap in front of our house and went and got the hose. I turned the tap on full-bore, kinked the hose to hold the water back and hauled it through the front gate to where the fire was now burning.

I unkinked the hose expecting to see the usual gush of water sprout forth and it went drip…drip…drip…

I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing and laughing and the grandmother joined in. The gardener didn’t quite know what to do but his grin said it all.

The grandmother came over and gave me a kindly pat on the arm, told the gardener to put the fire out and whatever else she said but we never had a fire lit there again.

Now that was probably the only time in my life I have been grateful for bad plumbing. jan@constructingprofits.com http://www.constructingprofits.com Showing contractors how to make more money ~ working fewer hours