Where does your washing machine drain to?

I am currently baby-sitting a washing machine for some friends that are in the States. This is a huge blessing because it is soooooo much nicer than having to hand wash all my clothes (granted, the house-help does do most of that work). Still I'll be sad when I have to say good-bye to this wonderful machine.

My house doesn't have much extra room so we converted the spare bathroom into the laundry room. The shower drain became the washing machine drain. It worked fairly well, most of the time.

Every once in a while a flood would occur. In the picture above you can see a small drain to the right of the washing machine. That drain would fill up and then water would spread out into the bedroom just outside the door. On Sunday this week I was almost late to church because I was mopping up a flood in the (thankfully mostly empty) bedroom.

So, we asked the fundi (repairman, pronounced 'foo-ndi') to come over and help us figure out how to get the drain to work properly so that there wouldn't be any more floods.

After a little examination the fundi decided that the drain was too narrow and it couldn't handle the pressure of the water from the washing machine...but thankfully there was another "drain" next to the washing machine that he thought could handle the pressure just fine.

So far the toilet seems to be able to adequately handle the pressure as the water drains from the washing machine. TIA.

*TIA = 'This is Africa'