The end of the drought

I have been without water for nearly 2 weeks. It affects you in more ways that you could imagine. You put off the washing (other than underwear of course!), you use the dishwater and dirty clothes water for ‘flushing’ the toilet...and as for showers, you try to do it with as little water as possible and as infrequently as possible! Toilet paper goes into a bin instead as it takes lots of water to flush down. Shoes lose their shine as it takes water to wash them. Dirt collects in the shower tray as you only have a little water to wash it all down. Drinking is something that can’t be cut really. Being clean and healthy actually starts to become a real challenge. I got someone to fetch me a couple of jerry cans worth of water, but because it is scarce here it comes back a bit muddy. And this is from someone who had no running water at all for my first 7 months here. I wonder how I lived like that all the time now. 

The scary thing is that you can never be sure when it is likely to return. Every day you turn the tap on in the hope that something will come out. And usually what happens is the tap spits out a mouthful of water and that’s it. You know you’re in trouble when everything looks dry and parched around where the tap is. It’s quite frustrating really. To say nothing of people who end up having to walk for miles in the sun to find the stuff. So I was absolutely delighted when the water returned today. I filled up every bucket and water container in the house to the brim and enjoyed running my fingers through it. I must stop taking water for granted. Its so easy after a while to forget how lucky I am to normally have easy access to water. Life really does become difficult without it.