27th August

Ahhh, the joy of living in my little wooden house.

1) My bath is now completely blocked, meaning if I have a shower, none of the water drains away and I have to empty the bath by scooping the water up with a bucket (or an empty tin can as the water level gets lower). If you poke a stick down the plughole, there is something very large and metal which has completely closed off the pipe (God knows what!) and so the pipes will need to be taken apart. Sigh.

2) The toilet used to flush when I filled the cistern up manually, but it has now completely given up and will now only make vague spluttering sounds when I press the button. We think this is because our water is not very pure, so it contains sand and particles which clog up the pipes and general system. The pipes which carry water to the toilet need to be taken apart and cleaned.

3) The rain is getting heavier and more frequent, which is lovely, as I really enjoy the Ethiopian rainstorms. However, my house is very flimsy and leaky, so I have currently got rain dripping from the ceiling in the bedroom (luckily in the bedroom I don’t sleep in!) and trickling in under the kitchen door (there’s an outside door into the kitchen, but it’s not allowed to be opened ... don’t ask, it’s a long story involving the Devil, a bottle – or several – of gin and some concrete steps ...). I also found some kind of mushroom growing on one of the (inside) walls, yesterday – nice!

4) It appears that the noisiest rats in the known world have taken up residence in my bathroom and in my wardrobe. For the last 3 nights, I have been woken up at 4am by the sound of rats careening around the bathroom, banging into buckets and the toilet cistern, and knocking my shampoo bottles into the bath. They sound like they’re doing some kind of obstacle race (maybe they are?).

Meanwhile, the rat in my wardrobe appears to just be throwing himself continuously at the wardrobe doors, rattling them and generally making it appear that I have some kind of ghost in there desperate to get out (maybe I have?!).

Both rats (ha – who am I kidding! All the rats!) have been eating the poison I laid out for them, but they won’t bloody die!! It’s driving me mad! I definitely need a cat ...

On the good news front, though, the fact that I am emptying the bath manually means I am saving water as I use that to flush the toilet, and the constant moving of water is giving me a well needed upper body work out!

And anyway, what more could I want when today I sat outside on my little veranda, watching the brightest sunrise I’ve seen since I got here, and drinking a cup of tea. If only the rats would die ...