Shit happened

Mouse posted an account of her doings with one of the toilets in her house, and it reminded me of the last time we dealt with ours.  I made a long comment on that and since it illuminates our life here in Philippines, I reproduce it as a post on my blog:

Spewing shit is nasty.  Ours does that sometimes, then the pipe to the septic tank has to be cleaned out with a long length of hard plastic tubing.  It comes back out of the pipe all shitty, you haven't to be afraid of handling shit and fortunately neither Rose nor I are afraid of it.  Plumber, you are saying?  Don't make me laugh.


The last time shit happened - just a few months ago - the clean-out didn't work, so we had to take the top off the septic tank and poke about in the inlet pipe, the configuration of which I had forgotten.  



In the end, I decided more radical action was needed, so I cycled into town and asked the septic tank man ("Poso Negro", no idea what that means) to come and empty ours since it hasn't been emptied for 20 years, and he drove up baclwards with a big truck and a couple of  strong young men who also were not shit-scared and the pump in the truck sucked it all up in about 30 minutes.  Top back on, useless plastic tubing left in the hot sun to dry then coiled up, hands washed: back to normal.