My Plumbing Work Experience

My Plumbing Work Experience

Photo by Anıl Karakaya

Down here, handwork is considered very important, every parent as much as they have the chance, forces their children to get one or more skills in order to survive in life in case the government doesn't give them a job someday.

My parents are not different but they seem to value school so much and don't see it fit to combine it with any other thing. Let me say, that they prefer doing one thing at a time. So from my primary school down to secondary I was just doing school and did not combine it with any other thing.

But as soon as I graduated from college, My parents have been on my neck to get a hand work. It was not like I didn't want to learn but I am grown, at that point I thought I should be looking for money and not going to get a skill. Moreover, down here we believe the best time to learn a skill is when you are young because if you should grow first you may find it hard to do.

So, I kept dodging the idea of handwork until hunger and poverty started beating me hard, I went and met my parents one day about the idea of handwork. They brought different suggestions which I counter all because I thought they were stressful and not fun to do, I needed a classic handwork, something that could take me anywhere and had prestige. I don't like the way some workers look dirty.

Prior to that time, I had been hearing about plumbing work but I didn't really know what it was all about, all I knew was they fix pipes and tanks. so, when my mother brought the idea of plumbing I quickly agreed. I was excited about fixing tanks and pipes in big houses.

We quickly got a plumber and made an agreement as the custom is down here. One of those days I was home and my boss called me to follow him to work, I was so excited, that I didn't even change the clothes I was wearing.

When we got to the house, I didn't see new tanks or old ones to fix, and I didn't see pipes linking to the kitchen to repair but we were taken to the backyard and then shown a soak-away pit, then to a toilet chamber and they said the pipes were blocked.

"What pipes?" I asked myself, I just hope it's not what I am thinking. While I was still in that thought, my boss said "I should go and get a palm stick," when I brought it, he asked me to open the chamber cover, I did and the place suddenly got polluted with smell. There was no nose mask and no hand gloves.

I was just looking at my boss, he collected one of the sticks and I held one, he put one at the end of the pipes one at this end and the other on the other side. I was already feeling disgusted, though I was feeling like since it was my first day, my boss would let me do anything.

So, I looked for a place and sat but he called after grabbing the stick with the hands that he put inside the pipe to check if there was anything blocking the passage, the stick was wet with the liquid.

I was so angry, but the more he noticed my mood changed the more he would say grab it very well and push LoL. After that, he said we need to dig these pipes out and you are the one to do it.

I never knew he was setting me up, I began digging and before I knew it, I heard puussssss, and a dark liquid substance was everywhere on my clothes and my face. What? I scream. My boss looked at me and laughed so hard, you said you want to learn plumbing right? That is plumbing he said.

I looked at him and frowned, that liquid was human feces, something that I don't even touch, I never knew plumbing had anything to do with feces. I thought it was about fixing pipes to distribute water.

If human feces is involved then honestly, I have resigned, I resolved in my heart. As soon as I got home, my mom was like "You smell like shit what did you enter?" I just shook my head and headed street to the bathroom, after that day, I switched to tailoring, I can't kill myself.