Plumbing in Brazil...hooray

A few days ago we had a small plumbing emergency here at apartment 805. Toni, an American woman from Palm Springs who is staying with me for a few months while she helps out the church in Natal, was taking a shower and realized the water wasn't draining and had flooded her bathroom. So, she got out, went to my shower, and resumed. But then, all the water that didn't drain from her shower came up a separate drain in my bathroom and flooded mine as well. Uh oh.

So I called my go-to guy, Roberto, who then called his go-to guy, Joao, to have him come over within in the next few days to see what the problem was. Roberto promised it would be a hair clog, but I thought "what does he know?" and just agreed that we'd be careful about not taking too many showers close together, etc, until Joao could come.

Joao, the friendliest handy-man in the world, showed up this morning to start working on our little problem. After about 10 minutes of going back and forth between both bathrooms, he called "Cris! Can you bring me a plastic sack?!" with a bit of desperation. Afraid but a bit excited for what I was about to see, I ran in. There, in his hands, was a solid block of hair, the size of a small rabbit. I am not exaggerating. You know those little cottontails that run across the lawn when they think no one is looking? That was the size of what he pulled out of my drain. He held it with both hands, like a loaf of bread. The thing had to have been 3 or 4 pounds. Toni, feeling bad, said "I've only been here for one month!" and he said "No, no, this has been collecting for years. (Please note I have only lived here for 6 months of those 'years'. That was mostly NOT my hair.) You'll be good to go for about 3 more years before this has to be done again."

I promptly responded that I was happy he got paid to do that job, because I would not.

I am happy to announce that Joao is now my go-to guy, and he will be getting my business from here on out.