The Lake House

There's a lake outside our house. Okay, not a lake but a really big puddle. One of the water pipes sprung a leak. The pipes here are made of rubber, so that's not so uncommon. For about two weeks now, water has been gurgling up forming an ever growing puddle in the dirt road. The mosquitoes probably love it. It gives them a great place to lay eggs and wash down the blood they stole from me.

Because the water flow hasn't stopped, the government isn't going to fix the pipe. Which means that the pipe won't get fixed until we can't shower. Since the Gambian government isn't renowned for its quickness and efficiency, I'm crossing my fingers that the water keeps flowing.

In the mean time, we have a mini lake outside our house. It makes going anywhere a bit tricky, but a conveniently placed tire gives you enough to bounce over a narrower part of the puddle. I wanted to buy a gold fish for the puddle and train it to do tricks, but everyone told me it would probably die from all the pollution (supposedly there was a dead rat floating in it. I didn't see it and refuse to believe it exists because that is too icky).

Probably the oddest part of all of this is how normal I find it. If the pipe still works, why should the government fix it? The water's not really in our way, we can jump over it, after all. And in a way, does add a kind of afternoon-at-the-park feel to the compound. Well, maybe an afternoon-at-the-desert-park-located-right-next-to-a-huge-garbage-pile-where-sheep-love-eat-even-though-it-is-perpetually-on-fire.

I think tomorrow I'll make a fleet of paper boats and reenact the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.