Last words from Karin Brynard
Karin Brynard discovers that the severe drought in the Western Cape has created troubles of the most unexpected kind.
“You need to have the right angle, Manie – then you hit it like a sharpshooter,” I heard a man telling his friend in the hardware store the other day. “It’s all about aim, boet, because if your aim is poor, the whole lot lands on the floor and you’ll get it from the wife.”
“Doomed,” muttered Manie. A man of few words, obviously.
I was standing behind him and his friend-with-the-excellent-aim in the queue at a very busy Builders. On either side of us were displays of all kinds of devices for coping with the drought plaguing the Western Cape. In fact, I was there to get a piece of pipe to divert my dishwater to a storage drum.
“We don’t have one of those ordinary toilets,” said Manie’s friend. “The wife wanted one of those new fancy jobs that doesn’t stand on the floor like a normal loo. Damn thing floats above the ground with its cistern buried inside the wall. And what with the water restrictions, you don’t flush with drinking water. It’s all just grey water, these days. You shower in a bucket and that bucket goes to the toilet. A bucket, Manie. I spent tens of thousands of rands on floating toilets and I’m back on the bladdy bucket system!
“And I must gooi, boet. And if I spill, I’m in trouble. And then the wife starts complaining about a sore shoulder from all the water-carrying, and next thing the kids’ spines are growing all skew and it’s doctors and injections and physios. And eventually I’m the one who empties everyone’s buckets.”
Meanwhile, Manie was eyeing a contraption stacked alongside our queue. He picked one up; it looked like a small aluminium tray with a hole in the middle. On one side was a type of bowl with a sieve on top.
“Useless rubbish,” declared his friend with the bent-back kids. “My neighbour bought three of those things. It fits on top of your standard toilet cistern under the lid. You pour your grey water into that stupid little lip and the sieve’s supposed to filter out the impurities so they don’t clog your system. But you try pour a 10L bucket of dishwater into that little lip. Man, there’s more water on the seat and on the floor than in the cistern.” Manie dropped the scorned device with its useless little lip back on the display. “And women, mos, have a thing about a wet toilet. In my house, I’ve had to practise, man. It might sound like nothing to you. But you have to know how to pour, and for what. Because there are different pours for different things. If it’s just ...uh... number one, then you gooi a half-bucket. And you must aim at a precise spot on the porcelain. And you don’t dribble, otherwise it just mingles down there – you gooi.” The queue shuffled forward as two guys with a huge trolley-load of pumps and pipes departed. The sharpshooter gave their trolley a scornful glance. “Two more bloody fools digging wells, Manie,” he muttered. “In my neighbourhood, every Tom, Dick and Harry has a well-point. Or a borehole, or sommer both, thank you very much. As if money’s no object. One guy built an entire wetland with canals and furrows and plants and frogs and whatnot. All in his backyard. He wants to get off the municipal grid, he says.” “Yoh,” Manie offered. “It’ll be divorce for me if my aim with that bucket is bad. If it’s …um... number two, you know, then you empty the entire bucket. You have to aim at the front of the porcelain, otherwise you just end up churning the substance down there. And you don’t just chuck the water in, my friend, because then everything jumps out. No, you’ve got to judge your velocity and then you aim and...” Manie, I see, has deserted the cause. He’s surreptitiously plonked the water pump he had in his hands between the rejected cistern-trays and is headed to the door with his cell phone to his ear. The sharpshooter, looking a bit baffled at his sudden exit, saw me and edged a bit closer, an eager, chatty look on his face. I quickly dumped my pipe next to Manie’s pump. “Wrong pipe,” I heard myself declaring in a loud voice. And beat a hasty retreat out the door, hot on Manie’s heels.