Saturday Surprise!

I woke up Saturday morning to a surprise!  Not a good surprise, but a bad one.

I had planned on sleeping in on Saturday morning because our kids had been up late in our apartment with Allison, Annie, Abby Claire, and A.J. Brown, watching Harry Potter movies and baking cookies.  Friday night was the last night here for most of the Brown family.  Alan and three of the kids would be flying home Saturday night.  When they finished the movies, Abby Claire slept in the extra bed in Jennifer’s room and A.J. slept in the extra bed in Joshua’s room.  So my plan was to let the kids (and me) sleep late, and then I would make pancakes and bacon for everyone.  We planned to have a relaxing Saturday morning and afternoon, then have dinner with the Browns before Alan and the kids went to the airport.

Instead, Jim woke me up on Saturday morning, saying the living room ceiling was leaking.  Jim said he had already put a pot on the couch to catch the drips.  I told him to put towels under the pot to protect the couch.  Since this had happened a couple of months ago, I was not overly concerned.  But I was awake now, so I got up to see for myself.  The ceiling had some water drops collecting and dropping from one point.  It looked just like that the last time the big water tank on the roof of our building overflowed, but the last time when the plumber shut off the tank, the dripping had stopped.

But this time, the dripping water did not stop.  We had to cover the entire couch with towels and added more pots.  We called the front desk to report that the problem was getting worse, and we needed more towels.  They assured me that they were taking care of the leak.  When the dripping turned into a steady stream of water, we began to think they did not have things under control.  So, Jim and I started moving everything of value out of the living room (laptops, printer, papers, etc.).  And we called the front desk to tell them water was pouring out of the ceiling.  After a while the water finally stopped.  We thought everything would be okay, until Jim noticed the ceiling was beginning to sag.

Our apartment ceiling has a lower portion (like a shelf) that contains all the lights and goes around the entire living room, dining room and kitchen (in one continuous piece).  There is probably some fancy name for this which I don’t know, but I think you get the idea.  This lower part of the ceiling began to sag because it was soaked with water.  In the living room, there was a seam between sections of dry wall that started to separate.  So we moved the couch away from the wall, in case the ceiling came down.  We didn’t want wet plaster all over the furniture.  We waited and watched.

We watched as one section of living room ceiling fell to the floor, hitting the end of the couch.  Electrical wires from the lights and metal supports were hanging down now.  We called the front desk to let them know we needed some help.  We continued to watch as other sections of the ceiling threatened to fall (like dominoes).  We realized we needed to move more things out of the area, so I went over to unplug the power strip from the desk by the front door.  That’s when the ceiling really began to fall!  Jim was standing in the kitchen and could see the ceiling about to fall down on me, so he yelled, “Joline, watch out!”  I quickly moved to the side, and a section just missed me.  But then another section started coming down.  As I tried to move out of the way, the section fell right in front of me as I was moving, so I ended up tripping over it and fell on top on it.  I scrambled over the huge piece of dry wall and onto my feet.  All this happened so fast that I didn’t realize exactly what had happened until I was standing safely in the kitchen next to Jim.  Once the cloud of white dust settled, I could see the pieces of dry wall all over the floor, and the wires and metal hanging down from the ceiling.  I dusted myself off and made sure I was not injured.  I only had some sore spots where I fell on the ceiling.  But it was better that I fell on the ceiling than having the ceiling fall on me.

The hotel workers must have already been on their way up to our apartment because they were there immediately.  Their first concern was to make sure we were okay.  Then they quickly carried the large pieces out the door and started sweeping up the mess.  By the time we thought to grab a camera and take pictures, the scene was really not very dramatic.  But these photos will give you some idea of what happened.

Our living room after ceiling fell down

My living room ceiling today

Except for the fact that we are missing part of the ceiling in the living room and dining room, and it is much darker now that some of the lights are gone, our apartment is fine.  We are fine.  Thank you to everyone who has been praying for our protection while we are in Uganda.  We do feel like God has protected us.  And God has provided us with friends to support us.  Since my kitchen was covered in white dust and I couldn’t make breakfast, Holly had all the kids go downstairs while she made the breakfast I had planned to make.  The kids got to enjoy the morning, while Jim and I helped the hotel workers clean up the mess.

We have asked the hotel to wait to do repairs until we are in Kenya, so we don’t have to deal with more mess.  We have breathed enough dust already!