I went to the Hilton
to check the shower fittings.
I pretended it was
for an anniversary.

Makena's bathroom wasn't right.

Not broken, just wrong. The tub, the shower, the sink — too much happening, not enough talking to each other. It felt like compromises had been made that had no business being made. I had been looking at it for weeks telling myself it would resolve. It wasn't resolving.

In hindsight, when I engaged our general contractor there were items I hadn't put in his scope. Provisional sums for plumbing and electricity — I thought these came at the end, with the finishes. I made assumptions and didn't ask. I learnt something from that: always ask. Don't worry about acting dumb. Don't let that thought sit too long either. I can't blame him for what wasn't in his brief. But I also couldn't leave Makena's bathroom looking like a room that had given up on itself halfway through.

So we started again. New plumber. Sam's referral.

His name is Edgah.

The name does not prepare you for the person. Edgah sounds like a character from a film — the one who shows up in scene three and quietly becomes the one everyone defers to. That is, more or less, what happened.

Before Edgah came to site, I did my due diligence.

He told me he had worked on the Kwetu Collection by Hilton on Peponi Road. I did not want to take his word for it. I wanted to see the work. So I went to the Hilton. I asked about room rates. I requested to see the rooms. I mentioned I was planning an anniversary and would like to see what was available — the King Suite, the deluxe rooms, whatever they could show me. I asked about the flower arrangements. I admired the view from the windows.

What I was actually looking at: the plumbing in the showers. The detail in the toilets. The finish on every fitting in every bathroom they showed me.

After the tour I found the Maintenance manager. I told him I had been referred by my pal who said he worked here, then showed him the photo from WhatsApp.

He looked at the screen. Then back at me.

"Owino. Yeah kila kitu maji. He is our guy."

He still comes to maintain, the caretaker said. The grounds crew said the same without being asked.

I had my answer.

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The Saturday he came to site he arrived with questions.

Not a toolbox first questions. On the drive from Nairobi he was already asking about the design, the drainage, the flow. He had a mood board on his phone; bathrooms, water flow concepts, drainage layouts. The kind of preparation that tells you someone has been thinking about your problem before they arrived at it.

He came with Tav, our renewable energy expert. I should mention, we are going fully off-grid at Lava & Lake. Tav is a character in his own right and deserves his own issue. That day he was there for the electrical alignment, to make sure what Edgah was planning underground could talk to what Tav was planning above it.

When we got to site Edgah looked around and was genuinely taken by it. The design, the setting, the view. That appreciation opened him up, he started sharing ideas that went beyond what we had asked for. We began with the terrace, where the formwork was already done and drainage needed to be figured out. Edgah's suggestions didn't stop at the brief. He thought about what you couldn't see.

How to run pipes without them ever appearing, how to align electrical and plumbing conduits so neither would be visible in the finished walls. When he, Tav and the foreman started sparring I just watched. They were all agreeing, which with three strong opinions on a construction site is not something you take for granted.

Then we went to the bathroom.

He looked at Makena's design really looked at it then took out his "tep" (basically his measure) and started working through the space. Where will the bathtub sit. What is the distance between the glass and the wall. Then he stopped at the toilet.

"Where have you factored for the Arabian shower?"

An Arabian shower is a handheld water spray fitted next to the toilet. We thought it was a simple water inlet connected to the toilet. Edgah explained it has its own dedicated design, its own pressure requirements, its own placement logic. We had not accounted for any of that. We do now.

I had an answer in my head. It was the wrong answer. In my mind an Arabian shower was something you attached to the faucet. I had even been calling it a bidet without knowing what I meant by that. To Edgah it is a design decision you make before the first pipe goes in. Its own pressure requirements, its own placement, its own logic. Not an afterthought attached to something else. A thing in itself, designed from the start.

Then we moved to the shower. We want a recessed shelf built into the wall. Somewhere to place the shampoo, the shower gel, the hand shower. Edgah took it further: "make it deep enough to double as a seat". So you can hold the hand shower, sit, and the shelf holds everything you need at arm's reach. He didn't wait to be asked. He just saw it and said it.

The session I had planned for 30 to 45 minutes stretched to three hours.

We only found out when someone asked where our architect Tirop was. He had sent a WhatsApp message three hours earlier saying he was on his way. None of us had looked at our phones. We had been under the formwork slab when the rain came in, nobody moved to leave, we just kept going, sketching changes on the renders, closing the gap between what was drawn and what was going up. When we finally checked the time it had been three hours and we hadn't noticed any of them.

When it came time to brief Makena we got her on a WhatsApp video call. Not a regular call. She needed to see it. The site, the layout, Edgah explaining it himself. She watched, she listened, she asked her questions. Then she approved.

Because what you say and what gets built can be broken telephone. She needed to see that what was in her head was now in writing and in someone else's hands who understood it.

We left site at five. On the way back to Nairobi I stopped at the Delamere pit stop for bhajias.

Sam declared them the best bhajias he had ever eaten. I have a theory about that. When you have been hungry long enough, ants become the sweetest thing you have ever tasted. Maybe the bhajias were the best. Maybe Sam had just not eaten since morning. He did not disagree with either possibility.

A few minutes to seven, somewhere on the road back, I looked in the rearview mirror. Edgah and Sam were both asleep in the back seat. Completely gone. Tav was awake in the passenger seat. I was driving.

Five hours on site. Three hours in the rain under a formwork slab. A bathroom redesigned from scratch, a terrace drained properly for the first time, an Arabian shower that finally existed on paper the way it should. Two men with nothing left for the drive home.