Wet and sad

My carpet is wet!  Yes, the carpet in my living room is wet.  I haven’t been a particularly happy person these past few days.  Who wants to live with such a hostile pong?

I prayed and prayed for the rains to come.  And they’ve visited twice already, with pomp and show; its attendance coolness which lasted a few hours was much appreciated.  Oh why did this roof repairer do this to me?

Last season, my roof developed cracks - thanks to a plumber who came to repair a problem on our overhead water tank.  He fixed the overflow, but the legacy the plumber left us couldn’t compare to the agony we were to subsequently endure.

He was a heavy well-built man who had the looks of a boxer.  The only way he could get the runoff at the top of the roof fixed was to climb up there.

Hmmm.  Then someone recommended this roof repairer who was to assuage our distress.  I still remember how tall his list of items for the job at stake was:  nails, shingles, roof deck protection, vents, felt, this, that, ooooo we paid for everything.  We didn’t have a ladder; we procured one. 

He got the job done under two days and assured us our problems with roof leakage in our apartment were over.  He asked us to wait for the next rain to “test the waters”. 

But it was as if he had commanded the skies to withhold their torrents from my residence.  It could rain heavily about a mile away but there wouldn’t be a shower near mine.  It was quite strange.  Something kept telling me we hadn’t fully gotten a permanent solution to the problem. 

A month later, I invited the repairer home for a test run.  I bought a small tanker full of well water, and asked the entire content to be sprayed via a ladder, on the patched areas. Yes, right in the man’s presence.  Hm, the repairer was vindicated.  No leakage.

Feeling assured, I got for our small living room, a  wall-to-wall carpet just before the end of my gestation period.  I wanted a location in my home where my new baby could play on the floor comfortably.  I got the woollen type; a good deal for a second hand carpet.

But time always tells.  Last week’s rains have brought to bear the fact that we didn’t get value for our money spent on the leakage at all. I was at work when it started to rain last week.  I actually prayed for more rains because the likes of me needed the coolness and wonder breeze that accompanied the downpour. 

I was even more excited when Obodai sent me a message pepping me up; a message which told of how much he yearned for a good night’s sleep; a good night’s sleep beside a warm blooded companion.  His message really hyped an emotional trigger. 

I left the office feeling very joyful in the dust-free weather.  On my way home, I had so many lofty ideas running in my mind:  I would pick up Naa and Nii from school, bathe, feed and post hurriedly to their beds earlier than usual.  I so much looked forward to the “us-time alone” Obodai’s statement had initiated.

My hopes, however, came dashing down when I opened our main door (it leads to our living room).  With mouth agape, I gave out a loud “awwwwwwwwww”, and placed my hands on my head.  The whole room was soaked with the acts of the tropical rain. 

I couldn’t cry, couldn’t move, and couldn’t call for help.  Naa Atswei kept shouting, “mummy the carpet has weeweed, the carpet has weeweed”.  I almost vented my anger and disappointment on the innocent three-year-old.

 Wading through the saturated flooring, I managed to carry across my little ones, and asked them to stay in their room till I finished cleaning up.  In fact, I didn’t even know where or how to start mopping the water.  With tears in my eyes, I attended to Naa and Nii who were hungry and cranky and therefore needed a quick bath.

 I was so confused, I wished I hadn’t come home first.  Obodai should have been the first witness to this. I’m sure he would have done a good mopping before my arrival.

With all the strength in me, I managed to lift up every gadget from the living room onto our narrow corridor.  How to move the dining table to clean that area now became a problem.  That mess created by the leakage was a real assessment of my serenity.  How do you mop water out of a heavy woolen carpet when you don’t see the water, but feel it so deep under your soles?  Very annoying!

In what seemed like two hours and a half, I had managed to mop out the water.  What was left was the clammy carpet.  Obodai arrived home with joy but found a tired and grouchy wife who would not be able to respond to any form of stimuli. 

The carpet had been fastened to the floor on the day it was laid.  How were we to pluck it off?  Oh! The kids cried themselves to sleep for lack of attention from both of us.  The carpet had all our attention.  Obodai and I slept with each other’s back facing the other.  Every zeal for “warming ourselves” up was drained off.  Sad, sad, sad.

By morning my whole apartment was smelling like a cat’s urine – very distinctive and upsetting odour.  Our ceiling fan has been on since that evening, just to help dry the carpet, but it doesn’t seem to be doing a fast track job.

 The stench seems to get better in insignificant bits by the day; it hasn’t been easy.  Someone tells me it could take as long as a month and a half to get back our dry carpet.  It’s a terrible experience.

In that regard, let me kindly plead with all visitors to keep their stopovers at bay till after April.  There is no way I can entertain guests in my home with this kind of malodorous fragrance.  As for the roof repairer, I shall deal with him my own way.