Recently I was asked if I missed Cameroon.  I said that I miss many people, food items and the pace, but I don’t necessarily miss the daily life stuff that takes much longer to accomplish.

Thursday night I had cleaned the house (at least where guests would see), had done all our errands (Thursday afternoons are crazy with errands) and was finishing the hand washed items from supper (those items I can’t put in the dishwasher).  I was draining the dish water and turned the garbage disposal on to help suck down the dish water when water started shooting up from the other side of the sink drain.  Yikes!  So this is all about 30 minutes before guests were to arrive.  David was working late and I needed to address the problem.

I ran downstairs to grab a sink plunger, when I found parts to a thing we gave away (I quickly snapped a picture of those parts and sent them to my friend), now back to the drain.  The plunger didn’t work at all.  Step two, drain the pipes under the sink.  Great, the water has went down, but I didn’t fix the problem, oh well – it will need to wait.

Friday the water seemed to kind of drain, at least it isn’t standing in the sink.

Saturday afternoon the water is standing in the sink and we decided to buy drain cleaner.  After two different brands and bottles, the drain wouldn’t drain the sink water.  Saturday night, we decided to let the drain cleaners sit overnight to hopefully open the drain.  In the meantime, I had a sink full of dishes and a dishwasher full of dishes because we didn’t want to run the dishwasher Friday night with the sink being sluggish to drain since the dishwasher shares the drain pipe with the sink.

I saw plantains in good condition and at a decent price at the store on Saturday afternoon, so I decided we were going to have Cameroon night and dine on peanut sauce with plantains.  I didn’t have in mind that not only would I be making a Cameroon dish, but I would need to wash our dishes in basins (or big bowls) like we did in Cameroon and dump the water outside, like we did in Cameroon.  I was thankful the power stayed on and we did have running water.

In case you are curious, after returning from church on Sunday afternoon, I cleaned out the clean out on the pipe downstairs.  I couldn’t reach the clog with our little drain snake, so after David returned home from a meeting, we rented an electric drain snake and with the help of our neighbor, got the drain opened. Yeah for being able to run the dishwasher again and use the kitchen sink!