Plumbing problems

When i got back from my month long America vacation i came back to a house where my toilette wasn't working. Great, i thought. So i had to talk to my host dad and tell him it wasn't working so he could call someone to come out and have it fixed. He knew someone who could fix it, so he called and said he would be there the next day.

So, the next day Mark and I wait all day for the plumber to come and fix the problem. Well like a Malien he comes at 4:30 in the afternoon. I had spent HOURS waiting but finally he was there. It took him about 3 minutes to fix the lever thing that tells the water when to stop running. He told me "Pull it like a baby". My toilette is the pull kind where there is a pull thing on top of it that you lift to flush (different that American toilettes). So he made me practice a few times in front of him to make sure i wouldn't brake it again.

The toilette is all fixed and working like a charm now. BUT, two days after this, Mark and I are coming back from pizza night at one of the hotels. Our feet are muddy from the walk back, so we get back to my apartment at about 11pm and go to wash our feet when the faucet breaks. It is gushing water everywhere. I grab buckets and those start overflowing. Mark is trying to fix the faucet with no luck. After about 5 minutes of failed fixing we run outside to find someone to turn off the water to my house. By this time its past 11:30 and there is noone up in my compound. But there were voices outside so Mark runs over and says something along the lines of "The water is running and wont stop" in Bambara to the men. Thank god, one of the men there was from my compound and knew what to do. He also knew where the water line was for my house. BUT, there was a lock on the box to turn off the water. So he had to go and wake my host dad, find the keys and start looking for the key. No luck finding the key, of course. So we had to smash the lock and turn off the water. Host pappa said that he would call the plumber again in the morning.

The next day i had to wait, again, for the plumber to come. But i thought since he came late afternoon the last time, he could come about the same time again. Well at 5:30 pm still no word from the plumber so i went to ask host dad what the deal was. He said that the guy would be here by 4. I told him that it was an hour and a half past 4. So we tried to call the plumber but his phone was off. Mind you, i haven't had water in my apartment for over 17 hours. I wanted to take a shower and was getting nervous that the plumber wasn't comeing. At 6:15 i got a "conk conk" on my door and it was the plumber. This time it only took him about 30 seconds to fix the problem and then procceded to ask me for the baseball hat sitting on my coffee table. I gave him the hat and he went on his merry way.