Curiosity

Does your curiosity ever get the best of you?  Does it get you in trouble?  When I was little it did.  Growing up helps.  Sometimes curiosity can be a good thing.

In our back yard are three cement pads with heavy meddle lids in the middle of them.  I (Rita) knew they had to do with our septic.  What women wants to look under lids that have to do with the septic?  My thoughts exactly! 

Then I got to thinking, if my Dad came to visit he would have looked under them in the first day.  He is notorious for that.  He has checked out every place we have lived.  Take for example the mission house we lived in before we left for over seas.  There are two meddle grates in that yard.  Dad put the hose down them and turn on the water and then went in search of where the water drained out, and we paid for our water there.  He never did find it!  That is my Dad!  I love him for it!

So, one day last week I was walking around the yard checking things out.  I decided to brave the lid and see if I could lift it.  I could and I was grossed out.  I put it back in place quickly.  The more I thought about it though the more I realized that this is why our toilet gets backed up.  There have been times in the last 2 plus years that our toilet has been off limits for going #2.  Toilet plungers do not, I say do not work on these Zambian toilets.  So it gets very frustrating.

A week later I was out in the yard again.  We have a gardener who takes care of the garden, but doesn’t pick any veggies.  So I try to meander around it and see what I need to take care of.  Steve came out and together we investigated our septic system.  The above two pictures are of the same cement box in our yard.  We got a bucket of water and the hose and cleaned it out before I took a picture.  You can thank me later.   The week before, after my first thought, I had a second thought.  They should have built if differently, than it wouldn’t get so backed up.  There are four gutters draining into one gutter that goes into a pipe down to the next cement box.  The top gutter it our toilet.  The other gutters were clean.  The tub, sinks, and shower help keep the stuff moving.  Both toilet gutters should be at the bottom or to the left in the picture and the sinks and showers to the top or right.  That way our toilet wouldn’t get backed up in here.  OK, enough of that stinky subject.

This is the next box that the pipe from the above box runs into.  This box is for the kitchen sink.  It was just about as gross as the last one.  Steve is cleaning out the first box.  The sinks and showers all drain out of a pipe (no kidding) into a cement box right outside of the house where the sink or tub it.  We have three of these, one outside each bathroom and then this one outside the kitchen.  This one was filled with mud.  It didn’t make sense at the time, but the more I thought about it, I remembered the ants.  The ants filled this box with mud, there is no other explanation. Then a drain and pipe lead from the box Steve is cleaning out in the box to the left of him.

This box drains into a very deep septic tank.  We took the broken meddle lid off of it.  Steve put a long meddle rod and and it didn’t touch the bottom.  So we thought we will just change the lids around.  Can you believe it ever lid is a different size!?!?!  The lids do cover the other holes but not properly and you can tell, it smells out back.  So tomorrow it is off to get the septic lid welded.  We were not so concerned about it as it was broken back in January.  Now, knowing of our bottomless pit and that the kids ride their bikes over that lid, we are getting the lid fix.

There is one more box in our yard that we still are not sure about.  Our guess at the moment is maybe we do have bore hole.  That is a well for you folks back in the good ol’ US of A.

Better subjects to come later!

Rita