Chores

Today I thought seriously about moving out on my own. To my own wooden house with cracks in between every plank, a zinc roof, cement floors and a latrine in the backyard. My own Dominican dream house...

I came home this afternoon, after spending the weekend in the capital (Santo Domingo) and Santiago to an empty house. Francia "salio," or left, as my neighbor told me. Who knows when... yesterday? Friday? This morning? 5 minutes before I arrived from my motorcycle taxi ride? Yet the house still seemed to have the air of abandonment.

I walked up the stairs to my room and noticed cat poop and throw-up on the floor, the floor-mat and the bed where the guard sleeps outside of my window. "Well I guess cleaning never hurt anyone," I thought to myself.

I walked back down the stairs, unlocked the downstairs part of the house to the kitchen and found moldy fruit being invaded by a nation of fruit flies in the sink. Dirt and leaves had blown in from the open windows to leave a general cover of grime on the counters and floor. "Well, I guess cleaning the whole house never hurt anyone," I thought to myself now.

I went to do laundry, since we had power and water at the same time, and found the semi-automatic washing machine to also have a nice layer of dirt in the bottom of the machine. I cleaned the washing machine in order to clean my clothes, and then the work began.

Washed a load of clothes, my sheets and a defected floor-mat. Swept and mopped the floors upstairs and downstairs. Disinfected my entire bathroom. Came downstairs and did the same to the kitchen counters and the stove. I was too lazy to clean the downstairs bathroom, but I did scrub the kitchen walls, because as the clouds parted and sun shone through the windows, there was a ridiculous amount of grease splotches on both walls by the stove.

Finished laundry and swept a part of the outside patio. Moved my air-drying clothes to follow the fleeting sun, when all of a sudden the water faucet (where the house is, what's that called?) exploded. It was like the Tivoli Fountain in my front-yard. I ran over and tried to put the PCP pipe back together, which had rocketed off from all the pressure.

I failed miserably. In attempts to put the already jerry-rigged pipe pieces back together, I basically took a shower instead. The entire front of my body got drenched in the downpour. It was hilarious. I tried again and drenched myself even more. I decided I was a fool for trying to do this alone and ran through the water and my yard to my neighbor's house, and with water dripping down my face asked her frantically to come help me.

After a little bit more of a struggle and some more direct facial water shots, together we eventually fixed the water geyser. By this time, the grass and the dirt had become flooded to become a swamp and a mud-pit.

I told my neighbor, Lidia, thank you very much and how sorry I was that she got her clothes wet. She just smiled and said she was going to change anyway so not to worry and she was always there for help. She patted her now wet jeans, laughed and walked away, and I knew that she really did mean that she would always be there to help me.

I decided after this moment, that a dirty house that would never truly by mine was worth a good neighbor who would always be there to help control the floods.