A Ghetto, A Flood, and A Change Of Attitude

“The Hole,” is what I called it.

And it was a hole! To call it an apartment was a bit of a stretch. I guess that’s what you get living in the ghetto. It was all I could afford from my pitiful part-time wage teaching English at one of the language schools in San José, Costa Rica.

It was nothing more than a small room on the second floor of a rundown building with flimsy plasterboard cordoning off a small rectangular bathroom in the corner. It was also filthy, had no stove or cooking apparatus of any kind, an outdoor sink installed as an indoor one, and barely enough room to fit much of anything.

The highlight of the so-called apartment was the small gap at the top of the walls which allowed you to hear and smell everything that went on in the neighbouring apartments. The woman who lived to my left got up every morning at 4 am to cook breakfast, sometimes turning on what I can only assume was a washing machine — I couldn’t imagine where she’d found space for it!

Despite trying to dress it up as much as I could by adding a few splashes of colour, my additions were relatively futile in making me feel okay about living there.

The Flood

How does an apartment on the second floor get flooded, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

Costa Rica has two seasons; the wet season and the dry season. In the wet season, it rains every day, in the dry season you barely see a drop of rain, and each season lasts around six months. During the dry season to save the precious groundwater that accumulates during the wet season, the city turns the water off for hours at a time. On some days it’s at the most inconvenient times, mornings and evenings, and on others, it’s during the night. Sometimes the water is off for twelve hours and sometimes it flows freely all day.

All Costa Ricans store plastic bottles filled with water for such occasions, enabling them to cook, make coffee, bathe themselves, or wash the dishes. My first stint without water was a giant learning curve and I promptly followed suit, packing as many containers under my ghetto sink as possible.

Due to the paper-thin walls of the apartment, I slept with earplugs in on most nights, pulling them out of my increasingly tender ear canals every morning. That night was one such night as the steady sound of water drove me crazy.

For heaven’s sake! Can’t you run your washer at a decent hour? I thought angrily as I jammed the earplugs into my throbbing ears and lay back down on the piece of foam that passed itself off as a mattress on my single bed.

As my frustration slowly subsided, I fell asleep.

Eight hours later I opened my eyes wearily, removing the earplugs that had kept me oblivious during the night. She has her washer going again? What the hell? I thought with irritation as the sound of running water once again invaded my consciousness.

I took a deep breath, stretched, and swung my legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor.

Splash!

What the…? Water was everywhere, undulating on my apartment floor. I sat there for a moment trying to clear my foggy morning mind in an attempt to figure out what was going on.

My head snapped in the direction of my laptop, my most prized possession, to see if the power cable was submerged. Thankfully, I had draped it over the stool that it sat on — someone somewhere must have been watching over me!

I stood up and waded through the water. Okay so I’m being a tad overly dramatic here, it was barely a centimetre high and hadn’t yet reached the far wall of my room. It, however, continued to flow in from under the skirting boards that separated me from my annoying neighbour. I headed to her door and banged on it.

Nothing. I banged again calling out. “Hello?” Nothing.

Returning to my apartment, I grabbed my cellphone and messaged my landlady. Generally, she was about as effective as a t-shirt in a snowstorm so it was no great surprise when I didn’t get a response. I knew that her son lived with her and he spoke English. I called him. No response. I messaged him. Still no response.

With no other option, I set about trying to stave off the steady stream of water creeping under the poorly constructed walls. I was in the middle of wringing out a bath towel when I heard the son come running up the stairs followed by a glorious silence.

The sound of running water had stopped.

My neighbour, in her infinite wisdom, had taken off the night before to spend a couple of days with her parents. Possibly in her haste to get out of San José, she had forgotten to shut off the faucet when she left.

How is that possible, you ask?

The water had been off when she headed out the door and some people turn on a faucet so they can be alerted when the water comes back on. The only limitation of this strategy, nevertheless, is that you actually have to be in the same vicinity to benefit from it. The water came back on but she wasn’t home to turn it off, and… well, you get the rest of the story.

A Shift in Attitude

After a large pot of coffee assisted me in achieving a new level of enlightened thinking, I decided to reframe the situation.

• Firstly, my floor was cleaner than it had ever been.
• Secondly, it made me very aware of leaving any faucets on in the apartment while the water was off.
• And thirdly, my ghetto apartment had now officially been cleansed!

Cleansed — not cleaned. It would have taken a team of Monicas from the TV show Friends armed with industrial strength detergent to remove the years of filth that had built up in there.

Suffice it to say, I listened very carefully for any sounds of running water before I lay my head down each night.

Please feel free to buy me a coffee if you like what you read.