plumber's kit

 After a few days of trying to get the plumber to come to the house, he finally showed up.  I think he would have come a lot sooner if he knew there was a problem such as a broken pipe, but I had told him that it was mainly to help me hang pictures.  I know, that doesn't sound like a job for a plumber, but it is here.  Houses are built with cement block bricks and it is all but impossible to hammer nails into the walls.  There are these tiny nails that I've found that I can hammer in, but they are only good for hanging very small or light things.  Anything heavy requires a special drill (which we don't have) to make a hole so a plastic anchor can be put in to attach a screw.
For a few weeks I've had things sitting on the floor all around the house, on the floor just below where I wanted them attached to the wall.  I had already held the items up and marked spots with a pencil, Jean-Patrick helped me with that when he was home.  So I was very happy when the plumber finally came and the walls went from being bare to being decorated and functional.  It is really nice to have a few towel bars in the bathroom, for example! (and not just IN the bathroom, but actually attached to the wall!)
Since the plumber was already here, I asked him to take a look at the toilet as well.  Each time that it was flushed it made a ridiculous amount of noise, it sounded like it was groaning, and a bit of water would leak out.  In total, between the wall drilling and the toilet repair, the plumber was here for 4 hours.  The total price for labor was $8, and this was for the plumber and his assistant.

I took pictures of the plumber's kit which he kind of dumped out on the floor when he needed to find parts or tools.  I find this mess very amusing.  The plumber seemed to think that I was a bit odd to want to take pictures of it, but he then asked me to take a picture of him digging in the mess!

One other good thing that came out of this visit from the plumber is that we now own 2 very decent quality power-strips.  I think that's what you call them in English.  In French it's a "multi-prise."   I'm talking about the thing that you can plug in and then plug a bunch of stuff in to it.  These are essential here because when there is an outlet (and there are never enough) it only allows 1 thing to be plugged in, not 2 like in America.  It seems that China sends a lot of absolute junk to be sold in Mali.  A couple weeks ago I was at my friend's house and the power-strip that she had just bought burned up and the cord separated into 2 pieces because it got so hot.  We had a power-strip that the plumber accidentally knocked down from a table, and the cheap brittle plastic that it was made of shattered into pieces.  He apologized, and I said it was no big deal, it was clearly a cheap piece of junk if it would just break like that.  I mentioned that I wished I could find some better quality power-strips to buy, and the plumber said that he had some good ones for sale in his shop.  He sent his assistant off to go get a few models to show me while he kept working.  I bought 2 since the quality did seem better, and I checked online and found that they are a brand from Morocco.  So far so good.