My last couple days in Ethiopia are spent rather luxuriously at Lake Langano. Luckily, with the differences in economies and currencies, it wasn’t expensive to live it up for a couple days. Harya, Hileena, and I gather a crew, hire a private mini-bus for the weekend, and head on south to Lake Langano. The Sabana Resort is complete with a nice restaurant, a day spa, easy access to the lake’s silky waters, and comfortable rooms. It is a nice way for me to say goodbye to Ethiopia.
Everything goes relatively smoothly except for one unplanned adventure. In the middle of the second night, the pipes under our sink break, and water starts gushing out all over the bathroom floor. The hour is painfully late or early (depending on your perspective), and luckily Hileena wakes from the sound of the water. She in turn then wakes Harya and Kit who try to figure out their next steps. While doing so, they somehow manage to lock themselves out of the bathroom. The current picture now hasa leaking pipe under a sink, a locked door, and water starting to seep towards the rest of the room. Harya then comes and wakes me up thinking that I might be able to get through the locked door or fiddle with the lock mechanism enough to open it. I play around for a while, but with limited success. We end up dismantling the whole doorknob, but the situation only seems to get more dire. We then try to call anyone and everyone at the resort, but every number leads us to no answer and another dead end. Meanwhile, towels are being used to sop up the water coming under the door. The towels are then wrung out on the patio so as to try to limit the potential water damage to the room. Eventually after one of us runs around the resort looking for any sort of assistance, and we keep on calling every number that we can find, we get someone’s attention on the phone. They do not seem surprised or alarmed by the situation, which leads us to believe that this might not be an uncommon occurrence, and they call in someone with the right tools to get through the door and repair the bathroom sink. That all said, these couple of hours did provide a little extra excitement to the otherwise very relaxing weekend.