Are all contractors like this?

Well, we're back to talking about toilets.

"Stop," you say?  No, I must go on.  It will be okay.  I promise.

Here, in our front room, our toilets have glared at us since Saturday.

A friend's friend found us someone who could install the toilets, but we also needed someone to move the doors.  The reason was, once you got a toilet into the tiny room, there was no room for your legs.

Curse you tiny toilet!  ("Despicable Me," anyone?)

The interesting thing is that the toilet guys arrived only 10 minutes before the door guys.

World's were colliding!

If you look at pictures of our toilet before, you can see how the door swings in and over the squatty.

 

So on this particular day (Tuesday, March 8), we had the "door guys" move the door completely.  Instead of turning it around to swing the other way, we had them move it to a different door frame.  Now you can see that it swings in, and doesn't come near the squatty.

This was happening.

 And this.

And even this.

  And what I'm not showing you is all the nice plaster they knocked out of the newly painted wall.

So I went outside.  The noise and mess were kind of getting to me.

Lo and behold, someone was making cement in the courtyard.  

(This was a whole new process from the way I had seen Ugandans do it, but it worked.)

I left with another couple to go return something at the mall, and when I returned, this is what I saw.

Pretty, huh?

Of course, I haven't mopped it yet.

And, I think we just bought our landlord two nice toilets.  

Those things are in there pretty permanently.  We were thinking they would just put some epoxy on them and set them over the hole.

Nope. 

For those of you new to third world septic systems, this is where all toilet paper goes.  

All of you who have been to Matamoros with us remember, right. 

Kind of gross, but you "do" what you've got to "do." :)

You see that nice fan above the toilet to air out the room?

Well...ours is missing blades, so there is no fan and no airing out. 

Febreeze to the rescue!!

Drawback #1:  We were told not to use the facilities for 24 hours, and we had already decided to spend our first night in the house and moved all of our luggage in.

We knew the kids were ready to be "in the house," but we didn't have a mattress on our bed, and we didn't have working toilets inside, and the showers had gotten really dirty in the toilet/door process, and we didn't have silverware to eat with or propane to cook with, but what's a little inconvenience, right?

Answer to the mattress issue...doshaks.

Hard as a stinkin' rock, and we woke up with back pain the next day, but oh well.

Answer to the toilet issue...outside squatty.

Remember the outside squatty in the little white box I showed you earlier?

Yep, that's the one.  

I'll spare you pictures, because I have yet to clean it.  yuck. 

But it worked perfectly.  No one seemed to be concerned about it except me, because I'm the only one that gets up two or three times a night to go.

All I can tell you is that it worked, and at least a bat didn't fly up out of the hole and scare me.

Answer to the shower issue...no showers until cement can be scraped out.

Answer to no silverware or propane...fruit for breakfast.

All problems solved.

The next day we spent time cleaning up all the mess from the workers.

Please tell me that contractors where you live clean up behind themselves!