I have finished all my immigration paper work. I never have to do any of that again. Yesterday we left home at six in the morning to drive to Cordoba. We spent three hours queuing in immigration, and another three hours queuing in the civil registry. Joni became fed up with the whole thing at about the twenty minute mark, and most of the rest of Cordoba became fed up with us fairly soon afterwards, that is apart from the folk who appreciated it as a welcome diversion that he was smearing a green lollypop all over the chairs in the waiting room and occasionally over the legs of some of the people sitting on same. Martin still has one trip left to the civil registry, but by popular agreement he is going on his own next time. Apart from the high-pitched screaming, and spreading green lollypop across the world, Joni spent some time learning how to take his own clothes off; so I realised when I looked round and saw he was down to his nappy. We arrived home some fourteen hours after we had left, about two and a half minutes before our bible study group descended for their weekly meeting. Luckily I managed to chop the onions and tomatoes to go on the pizzas in the small talk bit before the meeting happened, while simultaneously bathing Joni (green lollypop in hair).
Today our kitchen flooded, which we thought was the washing machine until we realised that the water was coming up through a drain cover in the floor. So Martin went to look for a plumber, who came and informed us that we didn’t need a plumber, we needed to empty our septic tank yet again. I tried to ask him why it had filled up so quickly, and the explanation was something to do with “napas” coming down from above. Which was either something spiritual or something in plumber speak but either way I wasn’t getting it, so we called the sucky hose people to empty the black hole again. The sucky hose people said, “it’s your washing machine, you should try to tip the water out somewhere else”. Hmm yes, like over the neighbour’s wall or where? Which still didn’t explain why the tank had taken six months to fill up the first time and two weeks the second time. We really haven’t done that much extra washing, even counting the green lolly incident. In the afternoon I took the lid off the black hole, and was slightly disconcerted to see the water levels already rising. So we called on our neighbour, Sergio, who is also a builder and plumber. He tried to explain the “napas” which as far as we can make out is something to do with the water table, and it depends on the level of humidity and whether it’s a north wind or not. So I think that means I was right in the first place… “something spiritual in plumber speak”.