Too many BTs

Good things and bad things seem to come in waves here at Namumu. In an effort to avoid depressing all blog readers and to keep myself from posting various strings of expletives, I’ve actually been putting off writing for a few days due to a number of bad thing waves.

Just to get it out of the way, here’s a brief summary of the last two weeks:

The electric water pump on our bore hole broke down. Again. So, it was back to fetching water from the far away boreholes. Again. Our gardens took a big hit. Again. And for me, it was back to conserving water and cutting down on water usage in any way I could. Let’s just say I can count the number of times I bathed in the last two weeks on one hand…

The Toyota Surf, Namumu’s only working vehicle, broke down. Again. There were major engine problems. As we rely exclusively on the Surf to get to and from the bank daily and to transport our kapenta fishing materials this way and that we were really stuck. We had to keep hiring taxis and trucks to move us around, and man, it got expensive.

The problem generator on one of our kapenta rigs broke down. Again. We’ve had one rig fishing for the entire month, a month where, due to the weather, catches are always very, very high. So we’ve been missing out, danggit.

Things have really turned around in the last couple of days, though.

We installed a new electric water pump and our bore hole is back in action. Our gardens took a hit but will survive. And I’m bathing every day now! Hurray!

The Surf got repaired, so we’re saving on transport costs again. Hurray!

Our generator has been repaired and we’ll be fishing with two boats for the few remaining days in the fishing month. And, despite fishing with only one boat all month and incurring a number of repair and maintenance costs, it looks like we’re still going to turn a small profit this month. Hurray!

So, all that was nice.

In addition, the two younger girls that live next door that are always asking me if they can sweep my house are now always asking if they can wash my clothes. Boo ya!

Yes sir, things are looking up.