The 2021-22 school year appeared out of nowhere. Before I could fasten a clean mask to my face, students were streaming onto campus. Although I always resent the end of a vacation, I must admit the energy felt fantastic. The difference between starting school on Zoom (as we did last year) and starting in person was palpable, and even though we couldn’t see their smiles through their masks, we could hear the laughter.

School kicked off on Wednesday, July 28, and I spent much of the first day herding sixth-graders, those little lost lambs new to middle school, and helping them find their classrooms. Many of them were students I knew from my days in elementary school, so it’s been fun to reconnect. This is our sixth year at Nido de Aguilas, the longest we’ve ever stayed at any school. What a treat to watch these kids grow up!

Needless to say, Tony and I were both exhausted that night. We lounged on the sofa, eating dinner and watching old episodes of “Star Trek Voyager.” Around 8:30 p.m., I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I plodded to the kitchen with my dirty dishes and plans to hit the hay.

“Why is there water all over the floor?” I called out to Tony. Then I realized it was gushing from the laundry room. At first, we thought our washing machine was leaking, and we spent some time sleuthing around the hoses and filters. We mopped up the water, using most of our clean towels, and then I crawled into bed.

Two hours later, Tony shook me awake in a panic. “It’s flooding again!”

In a haze, I wandered to the kitchen, where dirty water was pouring from the drainage pipe in our laundry room. Not sewage, but still quite disgusting. We began sopping up the water, but we couldn’t keep pace with the geyser. Finally, I called the upstairs neighbor and, in very broken Spanish, explained what was going on. Her English-speaking daughter finally intervened and promised to turn off the water. That solved the problem temporarily.

The next morning at school, I asked a Chilena colleague to write a message to our building administrator, Jaime. She also tried to call him. He didn’t respond. That evening, he wrote to say a plumber would come the next morning. Whew!

However, when I got home from school the next day, I talked to Jorge, the building’s conserje, who is a doorman, handyman, and gardener, all rolled into a kind, cat-loving, gentle man with incomprehensible Chilean Spanish. No plumber had visited during the day, he said and asked if he could take a look at the problem. He came up to our apartment and ran some water in the kitchen sink, but I explained that the flooding happened when we weren’t even using any water. He went upstairs and ran the neighbor’s washing machine, and sure enough, along came a deluge. The neighbor, Anita, agreed not to wash clothes or dishes till we could fix the problem.

Jorge came back down to our apartment and told us he needed to remove a metal plate from the wall to access a pipe that ran down the length of the building. He suspected there was a clog under our apartment. He hammered and drilled and pounded and fussed with the bolts on that thing for hours. No luck despite some big chunks missing from the wall.

Jorge told me I needed to call a plumber. When I pointed out that the problem didn’t seem to be in our apartment, he shrugged and said, “Es su responsibilidad.” I couldn’t process HOW this could be my responsibility, but I talked with our fabulous landlord (a Canadian and former Nido teacher), who tried to help from afar. I even tried to rally the neighbors on the building’s Whatsapp chat.

Over the next couple days, Jaime continued to avoid doing his job. The neighbors pressured him to take care of it. After all, only a few months ago, a first floor apartment flooded so badly, the renters just left for good. At one point, Jaime posted a ridiculous message about how he had TRIED to schedule a plumber but then he found out we weren’t home so he cancelled it, implying it was OBVIOUSLY our fault. I was so angry, I wrote some caveman Spanish about how we didn’t even KNOW a plumber was coming, so how could we be home?!

In the meantime, the laundry piled up, and Tony resorted to doing dishes in the bathroom sink.

Jaime finally scheduled a plumber for Tuesday. I took the day off work to be home. The guy was very nice and respectful. He listened to my story and then spent the day popping in and out of the apartment. At one point, when I was alone, nasty water started gushing from the laundry pipe at full force. All my towels were in the bathtub, so I grabbed the kitchen trash can to catch the water. I ran out into the stairwell and enlisted a neighbor to help me find the plumber, who wandered in and stared at the quickly filling trashcan, obviously perplexed. I kicked a bucket under the water while I ran the trashcan to the bathroom to dump the water in the toilet, but the laundry room was fully flooded before I could return. Long story short, at the end of the day, Jorge came up to my apartment with the update. I called a friend to translate. “He says the plumber gave up,” she told me.

At that point, I burst into tears. We had gone six days without using our kitchen water or doing laundry, and I just felt like nobody was trying very hard to solve the problem. A couple hours later, Jorge returned and assured me a different plumber was coming the next day.

I couldn’t take another day off work, so we arranged for one of Tony’s former students to hang out at our place for the day. Around 1 p.m., she texted to say the work was finished and everything seemed to be working. I just couldn’t believe it!

Sure enough, life is getting back to normal for Tony and me. Suddenly we don’t resent doing laundry. And who knew how fabulous it would feel to spend the weekend cleaning toxic waste from our kitchen floors and sinks?

Let’s just hope this stinky start to the school year portends better times to come.