Our stove saga (written February 15)

When the volunteer we are replacing offered to sell us her double-burner gas stove and her mini-fridge, we thought we had hit gold. Not only were we avoiding having to pay full price for these expensive items new, but we also avoided having to deal with transporting them from Kombo to our village. Oh, and she had just refilled the gas tank a few weeks before! When we arrived in village, they were set up and ready for use. Perfect, right? Not so much.

On our first morning in village we noticed a relatively strong gas smell while we were cooking our oatmeal. Somewhat concerning, but we figured we just opened one of the valves too far or something like that. After playing around with the various valves and settings, we decided that it did not seem to be operator error and in the interest of not blowing up our new home, we should have someone come take a look at it. Peace Corps conveniently came by a few days later and told us that we needed a new regulator, which we could buy in Soma for D150 ($6). Great. However, neither we nor Peace Corps had the correct size wrench to remove the regulator from the heavy tank, so we started asking around for a wrench. Our sitemate nearby directed us to her local fix-everything-that-has-moving-parts guy, who gave us two wrenches to try. When neither fit, he rode his bike over to our house with another one that did fit. He insisted that we did not need a new regulator, and only needed a new rubber seal. He put a new one in and tightened everything down, which seemed to work at first, but unfortunately, when we tested it the next day, it leaked worse than before. Now sure that we did, in fact, need a new regulator, we located another wrench that fit in a pile of dust under a chair in the storeroom of our village skill center, removed the old regulator, and took it into Soma to help us explain to people what we wanted. We thought it would be smooth sailing from there...

We regulator #2 in Soma without a problem and put it on, only to find that it leaked just as badly as the previous one. We called in our host father to look at it, and he said the regulator was defective but he should be able to fix it. Over a period of several days he tried tightening everything as much as possible, switching the rubber seals on the two regulators, super glue, and wrapping string around the nozzle, all to no avail. He tried taking the new regulator to work, where he used metal glue on it, but someone dropped something on it while it was drying and broke it. Back to trying to fix regulator #1. He brought home metal glue, tried more super glue, tried cutting off the top of the rubber hose and reattaching it, and we tried duct tape (because why not?), which got the leak down to a small hiss, but didn't completely fix it. At that point our host father decided the best course of action would be for him to go back to Soma and buy another new regulator that was not defective.

We gave our host father money and he came back with a gently used regulator, having learned that the hardware store's entire new batch of regulators was defective (whether or not they knew this when they sold it to us is unclear). We put regulator #3 on with high hopes, but were quickly disappointed, as it STILL leaked! Our host father assured us that the only problem was the rubber seal needed to be replaced, which would be easily remedied. He tried to purchase one in Soma, then Kombo (he happened to be going there for a weekend), but discovered that you cannot buy a replacement seal in this country. However, he said, you can cut one from a piece of a car inner tube, which he obtained for us. He cut two different seals and put them in the regulator, but, lo and behold, it still leaked. At this point, he asks for a bar of soap and some water, which he mixed into a putty and spread over the seams as a type of home-made glue. Not surprisingly, since the super glue and the metal glue didn't work, the soap glue also didn't work.

A full month into this saga, we STILL did not have a working stove, which means: a) since we do not eat breakfast with our family, our only option for breakfast was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread, which believe it or not, do get old after a while; b) every day we were eating whatever our host mother cooked for lunch and dinner, which is a rotation of maybe 6-7 different dishes, all with a base of white rice and all but one including a heavy dose of dried fish, regardless of whether we like it or whether our stomachs were feeling up to Gambian food; and c) we spend almost every night waiting around for our host father to get home from work and come work on our stove. Quite the sad tale for a couple of foodies like us!

We are eternally grateful to our sitemate for keeping us sane during this period with weekly "american food" lunches/dinners cooked on her stove (ironically, "american food" thus far has included middle eastern, indian, and thai food!). She also happened to be going into Kombo around this point in the story, so our next strategy was to ask her to buy regulator #4 there, in hopes that they would be better quality and/or not defective down there. She did just that and finally, today we have a working stove!!! Definitely cause for celebration...