Continuing the Journey

Garden Adventure

Alia and I had transplanted 8 tomato plants into the small garden just in front of our porch. We'd been having a lot of rain and cool nights, which I've learned is perfect conditions for tomatoes to develop blight. So today's garden adventure began with a search for anti-blight treatment. Fortunately, the first hardware store that I entered directed me to the correct store, where I bought some chemicals for a few dollars.

We had also started a few tomato plants from seed, and they were growing in a milk container that I'd cut for that purpose. These plants were getting too big for the small space they were in, so I decided to plow up another small patch of the garden. I used a jembe, the larger hoe that small-scale farmers use around here, to break up the hardened soil. It hadn't rained for about a week so the ground was hard. I thought that I'd found a large root from some of the bushes I'd transplanted elsewhere, so I gave an extra tug - and broke the water line to our reserve water tank!!!

Soon the dry dirt of the garden was gooey mud, and I had a major job on hand. I had to shut the main valve from the city supply in order to repair the broken PVC pipe. However, this valve would close, but it water continued to flow. The old valve just wasn't working. So I decided to detach the pipe and let the water flow into the ground there, so that I could have dryer conditions where I needed to repair the broken pipe.
Cindy and I drove into the shopping area of Westlands (near where we live). The 1.5 mile drive can take 15 minutes due to the traffic, and the traffic was bad. We got an elbow, the piece that had broken, and some PVC glue at the hardware. I practiced my newly learned Swahili with a hawker trying to sell me a rechargeable flash flight, as Cindy bought some milk in Uchumi's, the local supermarket chain.

We returned home and I fixed the PVC pipe. After waiting some time for the glue to dry properly, I reconnected the line from the city supply and continued with the gardening work. I put in the new tomato plants and sprayed all the tomatoes with the anti-fungicide. I began watering some roses and then the tomatoes with a hose. There didn't seem to be much water pressure, but we often have water outages and low pressure, so I didn't think anything of it.

Finally, Cindy came back from shopping with Erika Minor, with whom we'd worked for several years in Djibouti. She checked the water situation at the Yoder's on the other side of the duplex, and they had good water pressure. So I went back out to see if I'd done something incorrectly in reconnecting to the city supply. As I disassembled the pipes, and put them back together, I noticed that the main supply into the house - not to the storage tank - had completely sheared off at a joint. The metal pipe (copper?) must be decades old and it had corroded so badly, that my manipulation of the pipes in disconnecting and reconnecting them had caused it to shear off.

So, now we had water running freely into the yard - through the water meter - and not into the house, nor the storage tank. It was also getting dark and shops were closed. I managed to plug the leak, and tomorrow the adventure continues.

posted by Brislen Family @ 8:44 PM