…others consider it a modern art installation.
Everything is reusable/recyclable here. I don’t mean that you can take things to an actual recycling center. Are you kidding? We don’t even have a waste water or trash collection authority.
No, what I mean to say is that folks here try to eek every last use out of every single resource they can access. Every last plastic water bottle is fully utilized. It’s reused endless times until it gets too crumpled or springs a hole.
One of the guys who comes in handy in keeping people’s stuff in action is a Fundi Plastiki. Fundi is a word to describe any skilled handworker. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters – they’re all fundis. And you make many words into Swahili by just adding “i” to the phonetic spelling of an English word. So a Fundi Plastiki is someone who repairs plastic.
Someone suggested that we have a Fundi Plastiki come to repair our water tank. Some previous tenant had removed an outlet from the tank and hadn’t closed the hole very well. So the weak points around the base of the tank were leaking. We took the advice and called the Fundi Plastiki, curious about what kind of magic he could work.
The Fundi Plastiki showed up with some strips of plastic and some metal rods. Then he started a small fire. He melted some of the plastic, then used the metal rods to rub the melted plastic on the leaks. He repeated the process a few times. And then he said it was fixed.
It was fixed for a few hours. And then it wasn’t anymore. Two thousand liters puts a lot of pressure on a weakness, and we weren’t surprised that a few strips of melted plastic didn’t produce a lasting solution.
So we decided we’d just rig something to let the leaking water drain away from the tank’s foundation. And thus, the above structure was created.
