Some of our affected bedding drying off on the stair railing.
I can't believe that it's been well over 3 months since I last posted an entry in my blog! We've spent most of this time back in the States visiting our family, and we are now finally getting settled again in Kinshasa. Anyway, I have several things that I want to write about, but the posts won't necessarily be in chronological order. However, I did want to write about some recent excitement in our household. On Monday evening as I was getting the boys ready for bed, I heard a loud "bang!" I wasn't sure what it was but I just figured that someone must have dropped something. Fortunately, Soren was more inquisitive than me, and he discovered that the bottom of our water heater burst open IN OUR LINEN CLOSET. Water was gushing absolutely everywhere, and our younger 2 boys were in panic. Anders kept on begging us to get out of the house immediately (I guess he invisioned our house filling up with water i.e., Titanic). We had a few boxes of blankets, quilts, pillows, sheets, etc. still in moving boxes on the floor of the closet, and they became completely and thoroughly saturated by the mineral-laden water (actually, I think that our water heater was full of iron silt rather than water).
Unfortunately, this is not our only experience with a burst water heater. The first home that Charles and I lived in was a farm house owned by my maternal grandmother that was built in 1912. Anyway, we arrived home one evening to find our kitchen and living room completely soaked! Like here in Kinshasa, the water heater met its doom due to the excessive build up of rust and other minerals. At the time, the town we lived in relied on well water because city water was not available (The water was pumped from the wells into the plumbing. And no, we did not have to carry it into the house with buckets. Sheesh! We weren't totally like "Little House on the Praire"). There were so many crazy minerals and gasses in that water that if you held a cigarette lighter up to the faucet while water was running, the water would catch on fire. Seriously. Now I'm not fussy about the water I drink, and I'm perfectly happy drinking tap water while I'm in the States or in other developed nations, but this water had a flavor that can only be described as "funky uniqueness."
Our next water heater disater occurred in Zambia. This water heater also became full of silt, rust, and minerals and burst open. Fortunately, the water heater was located outside, thus keeping damages to a minimum.
The worst water heater disaster that I can remember fortunately did not happen to us. While we were living in Ghana, another family at the embassy had their water heater EXPLODE in the middle of the night. It took out one of their walls and destroyed some of their paintings. I guess our incidents aren't so bad in comparison.
This whole situation has caused me to become rather concerned about our other water heater that is located directely above all of my handbags and next to my clothes closet. I'd better make sure our insurance policy covers this...
We recently added a new member to our household - Mboloko the duiker ("Mboloko" means "antelope" in Lingala). Duikers (Afrikaans for "diver") are tiny antelope that live throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. There are approximately 19 species of duikers, although I believe ours is a Common Duiker. She stands less than 2.5 feet high at the top of her head and she can't weigh much more than 25 or 30 lbs. She stays in our "forest area" during the day, and then she ventures out at twilight. Mboloko eats mainly grass and horse feed, but she doesn't want anything to do with my vegetable, herb, or flower gardens. I read on Wikipedia that duikers will also eat carrion, small birds, and rodents. At first I thought that someone had posted one of those blatently innacurate entries, but I checked some additional websites which reported the same information. Hmm, I guess I might want to rethink my plan of adding chicks into the mix. Anyway, Mboloko has gone through a series of families over the past few months (first family moved down to South Africa, second family had an attack dog, third family's wall was too short and she escaped, and then she stayed in temporary quaters). Understandably, by the time she arrived at our home she had a bit of an anxiety disorder, and she typically bolts if we get within a meter of her.
Mboloko and Soren
