Playing In the Rain

I wrote a couple months ago about the water problems in town, and the consequential battles I have had on my compound.  I am happy to report that the “helper girl” with whom I did not see eye-to-eye has since left and the water collection process is much less of a battle.  While water problems still persist in my area of town, I would now equate my water issues to playing with bath toys; let me explain.

Since I have been living in Dangila for about five months now, I have never had water during the day.  The one tap on my compound only ever flows with water sometime around 10pm to 2am.  I have learned to live with this, in fact this past week I almost didn’t notice that we hadn’t had water in six days!  I have become very good at conserving water and making do with my 20 liter bucket, accompanied by my collection of water bottles that I fill up as well.  The chore that takes the most amount of water by far is washing clothes, and I tend to do laundry on the day after the water comes, filling up my wash basins to get the job done without having to touch my core water stash.

It is frustrating that every day it pours buckets of rain, and yet we still have no water coming out of the pipe.  Day six of no water and I became desperate for a few liters to wash dishes, not wanting to use my remaining two liters on anything but an emergency cooking/drinking stash.  Don’t call the authorities or anything, I could always buy bottled water in town to drink if I needed to, but I try not to.  The rain began to pour in the late afternoon and I went outside to witness Billie (formerly Muluwark, but I now call her by her nickname) filling up big containers with rainwater gushing from one the gutter spouts that lie on either side of my doorway.  I noticed one of her empty washbasins lying around and picked it up to help her collect water from the opposite spout.  Maritu, the helper girl of my landlord, soon came to join us with her own big containers.  One spout ends about six inches from the ground, perfect for collecting in a washbasin, while the other spout ends just an inch from the ground.  Billie quickly grabbed a plastic bag to fill from the latter spout, which she would then pour into her bucket.

The buckets I fill as often as I can!

After a while of helping out I decided that I really needed to wash dishes, so I grabbed my washbasin and was given a turn to fill it up at the spout that was still pouring out water, which was now mostly clear, as opposed to the first few loads which were a bit mucky.  An hour later, I was as happy as could be with a bucket full of clean dishes, retaining those last couple of liters of pipe water for drinking.  I think this was the beginning of a daily routine, which will allow me to wash clothes whenever I wish! Plus, it is fun being resourceful and playing in the rain, filling up buckets like they were bath toys!