Twelve years ago, I dreamed of having a small pool under the house. It wasn’t a huge space, just two by three meters and just over a meter or so deep. I had a builder line the brick frame with cement, added stairs, put in a seat along the back, and then spent months tiling the entire thing with gorgeous mosaic art. For years, I worked on this pool, all the while thinking that one day I would be able to sit in its cool water on a warm evening with a glass of wine, and maybe some friends, or that I would be able to do some physiotherapy by attaching a surf leash to my ankle to swim miles at a time without actually moving forward in the water. That’s not what happened. Not even close.
The pool kept filling up with groundwater through cracks in the cement. I’d patch a crack, then believe it was fixed until it filled up again and I discovered another crack where the water was seeping in. It became like a game of whack-a-mole, fixing each crack whenever one appeared in the floor or on one of the walls, only to realize there was a new crack and water was leaking in from somewhere else. At one point, it was half full and fish were swimming around in the pool. I had no idea how they got in there. Because it was still the wet season, I had to wait months for the dry season to do anything about the cracks. The fish disappeared at some point. The cracks did not.
Crabs turned it into a meeting space and would gather for days at a time. Sometimes up to fifty crabs might be in the pool at the same time. I threw sliced carambolas in there to make sure they all had enough to eat. If they didn’t, they fought and ate each other. Every day, I picked fresh fruit for the crabs, and then every so often, during the dry season, I’d grab the rake and evict them all, sending them home to their respective holes so I could make more repairs and try to combat the leaks.
After the 5.8 earthquake last July, the cracks became impossible to fix. There was an endless stream of brackish groundwater flowing through the pool. There were two options: I could pull it all apart and start over, or I could forget about having a pool. At that point, after so much effort, I decided I needed to redirect my energies towards a different goal. The pool was no more. The space under the house would be transformed into something else.
The first step was to strip the tiles. I might be losing the pool dream, but I could salvage the tile for other projects. It was like ripping my heart out. All that art was going to be lost forever. I had to bite the bullet and get it done. All the tiles went into boxes, sorted into colors. After it was stripped, for almost two years, I threw all the garbage into the pool. At first, it seemed like I would never be able to fill it. Then, over time, the discards included old tires, a table that was broken, busted plant pots, electrical appliances that had burned out, and other large items that were too heavy to carry to the corner for the garbage truck to pick up. I continued to throw the house waste into the pit too. Eventually, when it had reached the three-quarters full mark, it was time to add the filler that the cement would be poured over.
Over the weekend, I had a truckload of filler dumped outside my house. Three young men turned up to transport the dirt and rock from the street to the pool using two wheelbarrows and three shovels. I set out drinking water and fresh fruit I’d just harvested from the garden, and left them to it. Three hours later, the pool was gone. We used the leftover filler to repair all the potholes in the road in front of my house. I feel like a door has been permanently closed and another one is about to open. The next step is to pack down the dirt and cover it with cement to create a floor at the same level as the rest of the floor. Let’s see what happens after that…
There’s a funny little story that happened with the boys after they finished work in the afternoon. I had no idea how old they were, figuring they were all around 18 or so as they dug into the dirt pile and pushed heavy wheelbarrows around all afternoon with barely a break except for a few water and fruit stops. When they were done, I asked, “Would you like a cold beer?” Beer is cerveza in Spanish. They all said, “Yes.” Upstairs, I pulled out two cold beers that had been on ice in the cooler all day and opened them. I took the beers downstairs and they laughed at me. “We don’t drink beer!” “You said you wanted beer,” I said. “We thought you said cherries,” they laughed.” Cherry is cereza in Spanish. Where does anyone get cherries in April? I thought. So without another word that could be misinterpreted, I smiled, paid them for their work and they left, still giggling that I would offer them beer.
Then, after this mini-miscommunication fiasco, I had an interesting dilemma. Now, I had two opened cold beers and I don’t drink beer. There were no plans to make any beer-battered dishes for a menu either. Instead, I quickly recapped them, put them in my bag, and went into the village looking for a couple of friends I knew would appreciate a cold beer. I showed up at their house unexpectedly while they were preparing food and was treated like a queen, invited to stay for a fabulous dinner where I didn’t have to cook a thing, and handed a nicely rolled joint to help me relax after the long hot day. In the end, it all worked out perfectly. Now, it’s time to see what’s behind that next door…