Plumbing

Our first weeks here we stayed in a house of a friend (a tremendously generous person we know through Maryknoll) in the working class suburb of Santiago called Ñuñoa, which I loved first of all because two ñs in a short word is fun. It is a family friendly neighborhood, with little playgrounds on almost every block, walkable, quiet streets, and because it is further East, great views of the Andes.  One morning while washing dishes a large buddle appeared on the floor, which I traced to a badly deteriorated drain. They don't have traps like in the US, but these weird siphon things, which I had to learn about as I assembled this PVC mess with virtually no tools. It seemed to work, and doing something apparently useful made me feel good, as opposed to the usual incompetence I feel trying to explain to a hardware store clerk what I'm looking for or trying to do.

The apartment we just moved into is similarly challenged, with the newly installed washing machine depositing its drainage water onto the kitchen floor. As a renter now, it felt more appropriate to have the owner deal with it, and the plumber she called, a very nice older fellow who lives down the block, showed up to assess it. At my urging we moved the washer into the shower (there are 3 full baths, so we can lose one to this), and this is the final product. The essence of the work was to make it function, and it seems to do that, as we can adjust the water temperature by using the shower knobs and the discharge goes right down the drain. Excellent!

Alright, that's way too much about plumbing. But all the time spent in hardware stores has highlighted a value of time that is different than in our lives in the US. When it's my turn to deal with the guy at the hardware store down the street, I can ask as many questions as I like, engage in idle chatter, or whatever, and they don't make me feel rushed. In general people make time for interactions, and even expect it. When we stopped by the apartment to look at it, the owner (an elderly widow who lived in the apartment until fairly recently), her son, and a neighbor were all there. We shared a big bottle of coke and some cake (from the local Lider chain, which was recently bought by Wal-mart...), and sat around the table chatting. The business we were transacting was worthy of maybe 20 minutes, but we were there probably 2 hours. It is challenging for me to think about having enough things on hand to be sure we can offer similar hospitality to visitors, and to leave plenty of unallocated time in my schedule to accommodate this sort of thing.