We noticed that water was leaking in around the air conditioner in our room and wondered how that could happen, but it was too dark to see. And the ceiling in our room was dripping…not a good thing either.
When daylight dawned we first surveyed the damage upstairs and there were leaks not only around the air conditioners, but in the ceilings in the upstairs bath, the stairwell, our bedroom and the big unfinished bedroom in the front of the house.
When we went downstairs we were looking a what remained of a little thin river that ran from the dining room, through the kitchen, bath, living room and then out under the front door. Not a pretty sight!
That is about a half an inch of water stuck in the dining room.
Notice the water marks on the wall behind the fridge and in the downstairs bath!
It was enough water to float the wastebasket!
We called the landlords and they came out within the hour and found the drain on the service patio in the back was hopelessly clogged, so the water had no where to go but into the house and also into the beauty salon next door. They started working to clear the drain and had the worst time of it, it just wouldn’t clear out, so they went next door to the beauty salon and opened up a foot square access in the floor and found it clogged with roots and mud. As they started digging away trying to find the opening for the drain several dozen rather large cockroaches zoomed out of the hole and into the beauty salon setting the girls screaming and running for their bug spray. Ralph stomped the ones that came our direction!!
As they worked away they finally got a hold of a large root from the bougainvillea in the neighbors back yard that had worked it’s way into the pipe. They yanked and yanked on the thing and finally dislodged this huge four foot long, three inch wide glop of root, mud, garbage, a yellow bouncy ball and more cockroaches…yuk! The debris from the pipeline filled two five gallon buckets! They then started on the much longer length of pipe from the beauty salon under our cochera to the road…and it was stuffed with tons of dirt, leaves, plastic bottle caps and mud. But at last they got it free flowing.
They returned on Saturday and put a protective coating all over the rooftop to prevent further leaking and to investigate how water could have leaked into the bedroom via the hole for the air conditioner. Turns out the house next door (which has been under construction for more than three years) added a vaulted roof that forces all their rainwater right down on to our patio wall and also right inside our bedroom!! Our landlord couldn’t believe it when he saw it. Guess it’s completely illegal to build that kind of roof unless it drains onto your own property. Can’t have it drain on anyone else’s. So looks like he’s going to make them change the roof, and he has his property rights behind him to make the change happen!! It will be interesting to see what happens with that!
In any case, we were blessed with just some wet and muddy floors, walls and ceilings and they are already drying out quite nicely. We are so thankful that none of our furniture or electronics were ruined by the little river!! God is good!
The year we were in La Cruz the church struggled mightily. Jose had health issues, the congregation whittled itself down to us and one other man. Finally, it came down to no one coming and Jose decided to close it.
So, the church in La Cruz joins the one in El Salto…shuttered. Of the four congregations that remain in Sinaloa, three are very tiny with only a few families and the one here in Mazatlan has about 25 families. Actually, there is one large extended family and all the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins and perhaps two other families as well.
Please pray for Pastor Ismael in Ceuta, Pastor Juan in El Castillo, Pastor Ignacio in El Rosario and Pastor Lupe in Mazatlan and their congregations.
There is a railroad crossing that we pass several times a week in our travels, though we rarely every catch the train itself, perhaps once a month. The train crossing has lights telling you to stop because the train is approaching and has rather sturdy crossing gates to prevent you from trying to cross in a brave but stupid moment. The crossing gates are very heavy reinforced metal and are operated by counterbalance with a guy coming out to push them down and lean on them to force them back up again once the train has passed. There is a little building along side the tracks where there is someone on duty 24 hours a day just to work the gates.
Of course, while waiting for the train to pass all that empty space on the right of the traffic fills up with motorcycles and bicycles and they are the first to get across once the train is gone and the gates are lifted, beating all the backed up traffic by several minutes sometimes!
We have discovered of late that there is a book exchange in the Golden Zone! We sometimes get starved for English reading materials so this is really an answered prayer for us. The paperbacks are $56 pesos for new releases, $46 for older books, but only $23 with a trade-in and we have trade-ins!! So we recently went down and browsed their racks and came home with some new books to read. Yippee!
In our Spanish classes this Spring Javier encouraged us to read in Spanish as well, particularly the newspapers so that we can be aware of things happening around us as well as build vocabulary. It also gives us something to talk about with the neighbors! So we’ve been buying the paper more often, and now rather than taking the dictionary and a week to get through it, it now takes the dictionary and a day or so! Not too bad.
By reading the paper though we learn more about the bad stuff happening around us, like a breakout of Dengue Fever to the south of us, which prompted city officials to come to every home and inspect possible sites for standing water (mosquito breeding ground) and to make sure we had insecticide powder in every one. They also wanted to know if our tinaco (water reservoir on the roof) had a cover on it as they can also be a breeding ground for mosquitoes. We knew it didn’t have one because the telephone installer told us it needed a cover. The Dengue folks encouraged us to get it covered soon. Since we have no access to the roof and no ladder, we talked to the landlords and they have installed a spanking new cover for us.
There’s also been narco-violence aplenty and a plain old fashioned murder at a business near our neighborhood. But also lots of weddings, baby showers and quince anos, which is a huge party given for a girl on her 15th birthday. All of these are covered in the paper with photos and stories…a whole section of the paper devoted to them.
One of the famous Getty family recently visited to produce and debut a play he’d written. They are talking about starting passenger train service from here to Tucson. That would be pretty awesome if they get it off the ground. They are starting to think about the problems of traffic and access as they have a huge housing boom happening here and no real plan in place to deal with the increased traffic. Pretty cool to have a better working knowledge of what’s going on around us.
