It's Always Something

Here in the Sandbox it seems like life can never just flow smothly, it's always something.

This week our gas tank for our oven ran out Monday night in the middle of dinner and we couldn't get it refilled until the next day. Tuesday our neighbor helped us out by taking our gas tank to get it refilled, only to find out that we needed a new tube b/c ours was old. He went to the souq but didn't find any and so we rigged it the best we could. As we were hooking up the gas tank to the oven I felt something wet on my toes. I was wearing flip flops and, surprised to be feeling water gently lapping at my feet, I worriedly looked down to find water flowing up out of the floor through the drain. (here just about every room has a drain in the floor. That way to clean all they have to do is pour a bucket of water in the floor and then squeegie it through the drain...real clean huh?).

There wasn't anything we could do about the water, seeing as how it was flowing from an unknown source underneath the floor, so we just finished hooking up the oven and then stood and watched until the water eventually stopped flowing. Of course it was too late to call a plumber so we cleaned up the mess and then cooked dinner like everything was just normal. This morning our engineer friend came over with a plumber and they cleaned out our drain which was kind of gross but definitely not gross enough to be the problem. When they went downstairs and outside to check out the pipe leading to the sewer line they discovered the source of the problem...there was no pipe!! Sure, there's a pipe running down the wall and it goes into the ground giving the appearance that everything is as it should be but then it stops a good foot short of the sewer line...no wonder we've been having problems! That's the Sandbox for ya!

This is just a picture of my dinner, nothing really exciting except that we just got a new little store down the road and now they sell ta'mia. (smashed up chic peas fried, same thing as falofel). So this kid just sits outside in the street all day long with his metal bowl of grease on top of a fire just waiting for people to come and get ta'mia. He's fries it up, throws it on some bread, calls it a sandwich and then wraps it up in newspaper for takeaway. And all this for only the equivalent of 25 cents. The real bonus is that I get to catch up the news while I eat my sandwich. The most intellectually stimulating sandwich I've had in a while.