That is what Aaron was shouting last night from the kitchen as our family was settling down to watch End of the Spear. At that time we had what I am calling a "Third-World Moment" or a TWM. You see a TWM is opportunity for you to check your coping skills because something is happening that you have no control over.
What happened here is the knob on the faucet broke at 8:30 at night. Tragedy, no. Easy to solve, nope. First, on a "normal" sink, you would go to the turn-off valves under the sink. Not in the Third-World. Second, you would go to the main shut off valve for the house. Not in the Third-World. Actually, that is not entirely true. It is not that you wouldn't do those things, its that you can't count on those things to actually work to help the problem.
Our TWM occurred when I discovered there were no shut-off valves under the sink so I went to the main shut-off valve. There I found that it would not turn, not even budge. I managed to get the hot water turned off, but we still had water flowing. TWM. What do you do when you have water flowing through a broken faucet and no way to turn it off. Part of the TWM is that there is no Home Depot to run to or plumber to call.
So here is what I did. I went through the house and looked at all the sinks. I found one that had both shut-off valves and a similar faucet. Then, with the help of my team mates who came to help, took the one faucet off to put on the other. In the process, one of the connecting hoses broke, TWM. This did not thwart us. We hooked up, under the sink, the borrowed faucet to just the cold water so that we could stop the water flow. Guess what! It worked!
Today, I managed to go to the bazaar and find a replacement part for the faucet and fix it this afternoon after church. There is still one broken sink, well half broken, the cold water still works. This week I should be able to get that fixed. Unless I have another TWM.
