It is 9a.m. Saturday morning and I am sitting out on the patio.  There is no breeze right now because it is time for the tide to turn, the sun is well up so there is not much shade but still being outside is preferable to being inside this morning. Why?  There is a plumber in my kitchen breaking the wall with a chisel and hammer and the noise ricocheting in this cement house is giving me a major headache. 

When I moved into this house in 2013, there was a small water heater mounted on the south wall of the kitchen but it was old and I assume it had not worked for quite some time because birds had built a nest in the top of it.  Since I have no need of hot tap water here in Mombasa, I just had it removed, however, during subsequent years I have had trouble with plaster falling off of the kitchen wall in that spot no matter how often we re-plastered.  I finally realized it is because the old iron water pipes are rusting, expanding, and forcing the plaster to crack.  The only solution is to replace all of the old iron pipes with PVC pipe…so today Joseph is pounding away, breaking the plaster/coral block wall and I am hoping that this is a one-day project.