We Americans think nothing about jumping in the shower each morning to lather up, get ourselves clean and sweet-smelling, and then going to work in (usually) freshly-laundered clothes. I never did understand why right-wingers seem to get off on calling liberals and “hippies” dirty, especially in the 21st century when most of us are perfectly average college students that are just as interested in being clean as your popped-collar College Republican. Basically, when you go without hot water for extended periods of time, it doesn’t matter how many cold showers you take – it’s just not the same. Or at least, that’s how I felt after not taking a hot shower for exactly a month, as of today.

But no longer! Light has broken through the clouds and Pat descended from the sky to save the day, wielding a plumber’s wrench and a coil of electrical tape. As of today, we officially have hot water and a working pump for water pressure at Philip’s house, and I can regain a semblance of my former levels of personal hygiene with hot showers and doing laundry. Previously, my “laundry” involved pouring soap on clothes and then scrubbing them with a brush while running Philip’s portable laundry machine on them, which “washed” clothes by swirling them gently in the tank. Not the most effective method of cleaning things, and I’m sure its benefits were more psychological than anything else.

Philip's house seems a lot taller when you're about to be lowered down it from a rope

But Pat, who will eventually be heading up EGT’s electrical training courses, was on the job and things got wrapped up quickly. We already had all the parts we needed (the pump and water heater), they just needed to be hooked up. Something that Americans, and Wisconsinites in particular, should know is that in the Middle East people think nothing of running wires, cables, piping all over the sides of their houses very haphazardly. You simply couldn’t do that in America, because your pipes would freeze/explode and wires would crack as soon as the Midwest turned into the Arctic as it does each year. In this case, we drilled a hole through the side of Philip’s house so that we could run a thick wire from where his air conditioner will (eventually) be up the roof. However, the wire wouldn’t feed through the 2-foot thick walls, and Philip and Pat seriously considered lowering me down from the roof on a rope so that I could pull the wire through by hand. We had the rope set up and everything when I decided (somewhat desperately) to try again before subjecting myself to thin strands of nylon. Thankfully, we made it work that time (hamdilallah!) and the rope wasn’t required. However, my fun wasn’t finished yet – Pat went downstairs to keep knocking holes through the bathroom walls to connect the water heater, and I started to run the wire from the wall to the pump. Pat had neglected to mention, though, that he had turned on the breaker box to run his drill, and as I reached for the wire to pull it towards me, suddenly it “exploded,” showering my outstretched hand with hot sparks and causing me to spasm backwards (narrowly avoiding falling over the side of the roof). “Hey Pat,” I called out as I pulled myself to my feet again, “I think you should turn of the breaker for the roof, if you could.” I could hear him laughing somewhere in the bathroom. Thanks for the schadenfreude, Pat.

The eye of Pat sees all!

Eventually though, we got both the heater’s pipes and electrical line connected, and the pump was soon humming away happily on the roof. We opened up the pipe to the heater, and listened as the water poured into the huge tank. This morning, I’m not too ashamed to say that I indulged myself with a 20 minute shower, something I would never do under normal circumstances. But when you haven’t felt hot water on your hair in weeks, you tend to forget you’re a desert country.

Today, we found out some more good news – during the morning meeting with Philip, Majid, and Ahmad, Wajih called from the office and let us know right away – IRD has signed the contract! It’s what we’ve been waiting months for, and now we can start up construction work on Ayn Al Basha again and finish the classrooms! More news on this front is sure to follow soon, but we’ll spend the rest of Ramadan working on paperwork and organization, and then begin the labor work after the Eid festival at the end of the month.