Part of My House Flooded Last Night

When you think about flooding, normally you think about normal occurances. A pipe broke, it rained so hard the house flooded, the river rose, your ceiling leaked. But, you don't normally think about the other way a house floods. A way that seems almost foreign to developed countries' mindsets. It is, in fact, a very common flooding incident in Latin America. It happened to me today.

I awoke early in order to take the garbage out. As I trudged into my bathroom to empty the full can of soiled toilet paper, my flip flop slipped on a puddle of water. My sleep-fogged brain registered that something had happened to the toilet, but it didn’t look serious, so I took the garbage outside.

Then I noticed it, a veritable river of water oozing from the bathroom into the hallway. Puddles of toilet water ran downhill until forming a centimeter deep reservoir in my kitchen. It was the Latin American Bathroom Nightmare. The one fear all foreign travelers and livers in Latin America share. The toilet overflow. The porcelain explosion. The leaking toilet.

I stared at the network of streams, rivers, and lakes that had formed in my kitchen. Thank God the water didn’t go into either the living room, where my luggage is, or into the other part of the kitchen, where my computer cables are. I glared blindly at the puddles until I realized putting on my glasses would make it easier to see the extent of the damage.

It was time to fix the tank. I went into the bathroom, took off the porcelain tank top, and adjusted the water level screw. Then, on to the next predicament of the newly formed lake in my kitchen. Luckily, I had about 5 towels to employ in the soaking up of water, as mops in Guatemala are really just rags attached to a stick. Not very effective for efficient water soaking-up. One by one I grabbed soaked towels, strained them in the sink, and returned them to the kitchen lake. Finally, I managed to soak up the last of the puddle, mop away my dirty foot prints, and went back to bed. What was the point of cooking in a marsh? Twenty minutes later, the remaining water seemed to have dried up and I could go about my normal business. The one difference, I’d be watching that toilet to make sure it didn’t explode on me again. I’ve got its number. Oh Latin American toilet issues.

Only 20 days to go in Guatemala.