The Cayambe Police Philharmonic

I meant to put this post up a couple of weeks ago, but with my tio’s death and all, it got pushed back a few days.

From the day I arrived with my host family, my mom had been complaining about how the sidewalk inside our front gate was broken. I noticed a few cracks, but they were minimal compared to some of the other projects around the house.

I would say the most glaring project is the shower with electric wires hanging in midair. A close second behind that could be the weed epidemic that has taken over large swaths of the garden behind the house. In third place, I would put the two large piles of stones and dirt that you hit when you open the front gate. Then, I might consider the sidewalk. That is, if you disregard the fact that the computer doesn’t turn on or that they can’t get a clear signal for any channels on the TV.

Either way, my madre saw the demand to redo the sidewalk, and who am I to question her decision?

Answer: nobody.

I woke up early Saturday morning and saw that my mom had prepared a large feast for me. I was kind of hungry, but I didn’t really understand the need for such amounts of food. My mom explained that I would be working hard and needed to eat.

At about 8:00, the Maestro walked in. I don’t know what kind of musical background he has, but my family refers to him as the maestro. He is the local handyman, and, for me, the source of countless Seinfeld references. (In case you don’t understand the title by now, Elaine (one of the main characters on Seinfeld) dated the Maestro, who was the conductor of the New York Police Philharmonic Orchestra).
We immediately started to work by tearing apart the existing sidewalk and clearing it out. Then, we gathered rocks to form the base for the new sidewalk and mixed together cement, dirt, water, and small rocks to form our concrete concoction. Then we put it all together. The Maestro was in charge of leveling.

We finished at around 5:00, but that was not the end of the household projects for the day. In the midst of our sidewalk restoration, the water went out. Luckily, the local handyman was around.
After completing the sidewalk, he went up to the water tank (which is on the roof of the house). You have to understand that none of the original parts of the water tank appear to be functioning correctly or are attached to what they are supposed to be attached to. But somehow, the system functions and there is water in the house, so they must be doing something right.

After about 40 minutes of trying to piece different pipes together and screw together different sections of pipe, the Maestro threw in the towel on this project. At one point, it seemed as if the problem was solved but then we couldn’t piece together final pipe that needed to be reattached. The verdict: my mom would need to go to the store to get a new piece of plastic.

Well, my mom hasn’t been to the store, and, somehow, we got the water back. In the meantime, the glass panes on the top of the water tank broke but that hasn’t really stopped our system either.
Monday afternoon, we had a bit of a scare when the water went out. I went upstairs with my siblings to check out the problem. The main tube that provides water to the house was disconnected. So we looked at our available resources to correct the problem and with a few feet of masking tape and two old bike tire tubes, we reconnected the pipes and temporarily solved the water issue.

I love this stuff.