The homeowner's blues...

Buying an appartment in French Guiana has been a very disappointing experience. We quickly realized that there was no trusting the lady real estate agent who sold us the house. Her promises of an apartment in nearly perfect shape were either lies or incompetency. Within days of moving in, the apartment began to fall apart.

The toilet leaked; two ceiling lights stopped working; my bedroom window handle came off in my hands; two plugs don't function; Jack's air conditioning in his bedroom stopped working; the garden gate fell down when we opened it...

And now this! One day, Jack and I were appalled to discover our back yard flooded. (Click on photos to enlarge)

Worse still, the strong stench made us think it was sewege water. We immediately called the residence's management and our insurance but unfortunately, as this is French Guiana, there's nothing much to be done.

When the waters had finally dried up, we took another look in our back yard and found the culprit.

A broken pipe!

After some help from our building's maintenance man, we discovered that the pipe brings dirty rain water into our garden. Actually, the pipe should continue into the sewer but apparently it was never attached to anything.

The bad news is that our insurance doesn't cover this incident AND they've told us we're not allowed to touch the pipes that go through our garden because they belong to our residence complex. We're currently waiting for the constructor's insurance company to expertise the problem. Normally, they should recognize their error and correct it. That is to say, normally... as we're in French Guiana we've got little chance and little protection, thus little real hope.