Caboose

Marion came round on Thursday night. I’d been out to the market earlier and had managed to buy some sheep-meat, so we had a mutton stew with potatoes and rosemary.

After that I thought we’d watch a film. I’d just put it on when NEPA took light. It had just started raining at the time, so this wasn’t too surprising. What was surprising was when water started pouring down all along the front wall of my living room. I fetched the mop and bucket and we tried to keep it back but there was a lot of water coming in.

I went to reception at the conference centre and managed to get one of the maintenance guys, who came straight back with me without any arguments or “I am coming”s. He looked at it and agreed with me that the gutter was probably blocked, so he went back to the main building to fetch a ladder. In the meantime Marion was still mopping furiously and moving everything away from the deluge.

When the maintenance guy got back he climbed up onto the roof and started poking at the gutter, there was a sudden rush of mud and leaves followed by a huge amount of water pouring down through the pipe. It must have kept pouring down for a couple of minutes. The water immediately stopped running down inside my house.

I gave him some money, to thank him for coming out so quickly and being willing to climb up a very rickety home-made ladder in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Afterwards Marion and I managed to get rid of most of the water through a combination of mopping and sweeping it out the front door with a brush. A towel across the doorway had kept all but a trickle from going through into the bedroom.

The problem was a combination of a lack of maintenance and poor design. I’d love to know who thought it’s a good idea to have a mostly sloping roof but with a large flat enclosed area at the front. There’s a big pipe to let water out but if that blocks the water builds up and eventually overflows inside the house. The “gutter” can probably contain a few hundred litres of water before overflowing.

All the other “chalets” at the conference centre had their gutters cleaned at the start of rainy season, but there’s always a bit of confusion over who’s responsble for maintenance of mine. It might be NTI’s estates department, who are unlikely to ever disturb themselves by doing any work, or it might be the conference centre’s maintenance staff. As a result the work wasn’t done.

If you think I’m being a bit harsh on the estates department, these are the same people responsible for the cooker that still gives me electric shocks after their utterly incompetent alleged electrician fixed it (after I’d waited weeks) and the disastrously bad plumbing in my kitchen (one tap has never worked and the other has water pouring out all around as well as out of the spout).