Today we had our own "Worst Flood In The History Of Shiloh" event.  (Just trying to keep up with all the catastrophes hitting the U.S. these days.)

It actually began on Sunday morning when a Brazilian pastor used a little more force than might have been strictly necessary to turn off the sink faucet in one of our many bathrooms. To his shock and surprise, the faucet handle snapped off in his hand.  

Papa Jim, our resident plumber, was occupied with other even more pressing issues until today, Tuesday.  His creative solution to this plumbing problem, in  a country where buying a new handle means buying significantly more  plumbing parts than was strictly necessary, for significantly more money than we had on hand, was to remove the handle off the (unused) bidet in our bathroom, and put it on the broken faucet in said other bathroom.  Sounds like your typical clever Papa Jim work around for various and sundry "impossible" maintenance issues out here on the Dark Side of the Moon.  And it was a great plan.  Except for one small glitch.  

Papa Jim, along with all the rest of us, had grown accustomed to our new normal.  For the better part of two months now, city water is shut off every morning between 5 to 7 a.m.  And it stays off all day long until 7 p.m. at the earliest.  Sometimes it comes back on at 8 or 9 p.m.  Sometimes it does not come back on until midnight, or 1, 2, or even 3 a.m.  Only to go back off sometime between 5 and 7 a.m.  We've all adapted quite well to this, our new normal.  And quite frankly, we've all been lulled to sleep by it.  We have ceased to dream of the day when we might have the luxury of water coming out of our faucets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  

Which brings us to today, and our resident plumber working on his creative faucet repair project, and the "Worst Flood In The History Of Shiloh" event.    You've probably already figured out where this story is going.  Sure enough, Papa Jim had taken off the faucet handle from our bidet, and he had been working in the other bathroom, preparing the broken faucet to receive it's new handle, when out of the blue, the city water was turned back on.  Roughly 30 minutes after this unheard of event took place (at 3:30 p.m. mind you, NOT "7 p.m. at the earliest" which we are so accustomed to) Papa Jim entered our bathroom to discover water flowing into every corner and just starting to flow out the door and into our bedroom!  Fortunately I was nearby and Francis was just a holler away.  He quickly came running with mop cloths and a squeegee and began mopping up water.  I grabbed a pile of towels out of the dirty cloths basket and started sopping up the water that was flowing into our room.  And Papa Jim began carrying things out of the flood zone and onto dry ground (also in our room).  

Since many hands really do make light work, an hour later there was scant evidence that there ever was a flood at Shiloh, and we had the cleanest bathroom floor in the entire city of Yaounde!  And the new handle?  It's working just fine.  All's well that ends well.