Background: I'm on my mission in this little podunk town called Villa Hayes. I was almost a year out and my current companion was none other than Hermana Hayes, a "valley girl" from Wyoming. We lived in a little house that really nice compared to Paraguayan standards, but might be considered a dump anywhere else. But it had air conditioning, and that is all that really mattered in the 120 degree sweltering melt-your-face off heat. And it was pink, which just made Hermana Hayes day when she moved in.
Now, the bathroom of that house was....special, to put it lightly. It was always having problems. Toilet clogging, sink clogging from previous idiot missionaries putting paper down the drain (really????), you name it. And out shower, which was electric (water heaters are only for the richest of Paraguay) burned out in the coldest part of winter, so for a few days I had to sponge-bath (rinse 2 seconds in ice water, lather with loofa, rinse quickly, done) and to wash my hair I heated up water on the stove and poured the pot over my head, lathered, and poured again to rinse. After I got transfered, the toilet actually completely detached itself from the wall it was connected to. Glad I wasn't there for that one.
Here's a picture of the sink episode:
But this blog isn't about any of those incidences. Actually, most of these issues happened after the one I want to write about. Let's just say that the bathroom had "some serious issues" as Hermana Hayes would put it. And in Paraguay, shower curtains didn't really exist, and neither did bathtubs. So the showers were in the corner of the bathroom, and the part you stood in to bathe was a few inches lower than the rest of the bathroom floor. For that reason, everyone was also provided with a squeegee thing to clean up shower water that sprayed beyond its necessary boundaries.
Now, the town of Villa Hayes had some issues of its own. Despite bordering the only river in the country, the power and the water would sometimes shut off (thankfully never at the same time.) These events were never pre-announced, so you just had to be prepared. The town was also located in the part of the country known as "el chaco," which pretty much meant "in the middle of nowhere...really." It was a 45-minute bus ride to the closest big city, which is where we had our district meetings on Tuesdays and where we had to do our grocery shopping on Monday.
Now that I've painted the picture of our circumstances, it's story time:
One night, while we were sleeping, we had a storm. Not a bad one, but it consisted of lots of rain. And when it rained, Villa Hayes became a rather muddy place since very few of its roads were paved. Anyway, the 6:30 alarm buzzed its not-so-cheerful tune and we woke up and began to say our morning prayers. Hermana Hayes finished first and went out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom.
I was still praying when I heard in a voice not unlike Alicia Silverstone from Clueless cry, "OH....MY...GOSH...."
My first thought was that there must have been some huge, atrocious-looking vermin in the house, which was not uncommon in the mission. I quickly finished praying and followed Hermana Hayes. As soon as I left the bedroom doorway, I was hit in the face with a wall of stench that about made me keel over right there. It was like getting hit in the nostrils by a brick made by New York City Sewer System's worst.
My companion turned on the bathroom light, which revealed that there was a lot of nasty-looking water invading our hallway. We peered into the bathroom, where we saw, to our horror, that the shower drain had decided to regurgitate itself during the night and was filled with black water. So much water had come up, that it had filled the shower area below the normal floor level, had overflowed, crept across the bathroom tiles and into our hallway. It was like something out of a horror movie had decided to make its residence in our bathroom. Apparently, due to the rain storm, the drain had clogged and reversed tides, which made it come back where it came from, along with all the oozing black smelly dirt it could bring with it.
I grabbed our squeegee and began to push the water towards the shower. Most fortunately, the effect of rippling waves of water was enough to make the water go back down the drain. Unfortunately, the black, odorous dirt was too heavy to easily follow, so it remained clinging to the blue ceramic tiles of the shower floor. The next half hour was spent getting the stinky dirt down the drain where it belonged, and pouring LOTS and LOTS of bleach down the drain.
I'm sure you can understand why we always wore sandals inside our house.
Fortunately, our drain monster never visited us again during my time there. But it's still there...lurking quietly...waiting for the next pair of unsuspecting, innocent sister missionaries to make its stealthy attack.
You just never know what adventures you will have in Paraguay.
note: this picture was taken after we had already started to remove the water. When we found it, ALL of the water was black and had overflowed.
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