Tangled in Red Tape
The lesson that I learned today is that, in this society, bureaucracy abounds. It's everywhere, not just in government.
My experience started when the intake line on our water heater sprung a leak, squirting water onto the electrical wire, resulting in some pretty decent fireworks -- a little scary since our water heater is right in our bathroom. Naturally, I had to do some plumbing work to sort the problem out.
It took two people, a hammer and vice grips to get the broken intake line off the wall, but that's just an aside. The real lesson started when I had to go to the hardware store to buy a little adapter so that I could fasten a female-end steel braided hose to a female-end water line.
Inside the hardware store, I was greeted by a man behind a counter. "Can I help you, please?" he said, or something like that in Portuguese. Knowing that I'd have a hard enough time trying to explain what I needed in English, let alone Portuguese, I came equipped with the old broken parts and asked for a pen and paper to draw a diagram.
"Oh, yes," the man understood what I was looking for. He went in the back and got one. Perfect, I said. So he took it away and wrote the name on a piece of paper. He pointed toward another counter.
I handed the piece of paper to a man behind the new counter, who looked at it and wrote the part number on another scrap of paper and pointed at a third counter.
The man at the third counter typed the part number into a computer and sent an invoice to a printer sitting beside a woman at a fourth counter.
I wish I were joking.
At the fourth counter, the lady asked me to pay. I realized that I didn't even have the part yet, so I protested. Silly estrangeiro. Of course I don't have the part yet. Once I paid, I brought the invoice back to the man who first helped me, who went to some shelves in the back to retrieve the part that I needed (again), got his supervisor to sign and stamp the invoice, and gave the package to me.
Four counters and six employees later, I was thankful to have the $0.60 part in my hand. And Laura was thankful to have hot water again.
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Post-script on "self-healing" plumbing
Here's a humourous little post-script to my plumbing story.
Once the original leak was fixed, I was disappointed to find that the water shut-off valve had developed a steady drip.
I was not looking forward to having to replace the entire valve.
I mentioned this to someone who has been living in Mozambique for several years, and he told me not to worry about it -- that in Mozambique, valves are "self-healing." He then explained that the pipes are so corroded that within a week or so, the leak would rust shut.
I laughed and hoped that it was true.
Today, three days after my plumbing work, the drip coming from the leaking valve has slowed nearly to a stop. I have no doubt that within the next couple of days it will have self-healed completely.
And now I have even more reason not to drink the tap water around here.
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