Water woes

It’s official, I have been through of my first drought. We did not have water at the college for 7 days. Only 7 days you say? Yes 7 days and it was terrible! I can’t even imagine when people in any country go without water for a year or more. Every time I needed to use the toilet I had to walk to the river, fill up a bucket, and walk back so I could flush. Yes, WE HAVE TOILETS HERE. I talked to someone on facebook the other day that I knew from K-state. She said, “There are toilets? You mean you don’t just dig a hole, go to the bathroom, and then fill the hole back up?” No, we have toilets, there are out-houses also, but where I am now everyone is past just taking a dump in the backyard (sorry for the bluntness). I was a little heated after that conversation; some people are just very closed-minded about the world we live in. Anyways, back to the water woes. During this week you can forget about a shower or washing your face, the river water is not exactly the ideal choice to bathe in, at least for me. Some of the Malawians can drink this water and not get sick, but I would be glued to the toilet seat for a week. There is the option of boiling the river water, but there wasn’t as much free time as I had expected to take an hour to boil the water to bathe. On Tuesday it was especially depressing because I went out with Chihiro. We left the school at 6:30 am and got back at 5:45 pm. We walked for a good 8 hours and I was exhausted, dirty, sweaty, sticky, and a plethora of other unfavorable words. All I could hope for was that there was enough water to wash my face and my feet, but no, there was none. Luckily during the weekend I bought enough bottled water for me to drink this week. I was planning on saving some of the bottles for later during the rainy season, but they were called into action much sooner than expected. I wrote a poem during the mini drought:
Oh …Water… Water,
where are you?
You’ve been gone for so long,
You’ve left me feeling blue.
I know I’ve taken you for granted
year after year,
But I long for you now,
If I didn’t need it so much I might shed a tear.
Please come back to me very soon,
For I fear I shall have drank my last drop of your bottled brother tomorrow by noon.
During this experience I have started to write poetry and draw pictures during my spare time, I even sometimes find myself wandering around in the library picking up books and reading, yes I said reading mother. When I am at my hostel I am deep in Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, but at the school I have started to read a book about Einstein. The water kicked back on on Thursday morning, the whole issue revolved around the facts that the pump was broken and our constant power issues. I woke up on Thursday in a cranky mood b/c there hadn’t been water on Wednesday night and I was officially out of drinking water. I was lying in my bed, just hoping for some reason I could go back to sleep, when all of a sudden I could hear the shower in the room next to mine. I jumped out of bed, massively tangling myself up in the mosquito netting, after quickly untangling myself I was so excited it was like Christmas morning when I was a little kid! The water Santa had come and I could finally shower! It was a great shower too, definitely a memorable shower haha. My expectations that our water woes here at Amalika will continue were confirmed on Friday when one of the project leaders relayed the message to us, that the pump that was supposed to be 45 meters down was in fact placed only 25 meters down in the borehole and now the other 20 meters has become too muddy to pump clean water; so we have to have the water company(borehole company) come back out and process the mud out of the water. Now you think since they made this gigantic mistake this company would want to come fix this problem, but they have not been answering the phone for over two weeks now and we finally worked out a deal for us to go and pick their surveyors up and bring them out here to fix the problem, then take them and their equipment home after the job is done. It’s a different world out here, unbelievable. The rainy season will be upon us soon. I am actually excited, because I like rain. The Malawians think I am crazy, and they all say I will not like rain by the time I leave. It will be a crazy month no doubt; I’m expecting tremendous downpours and unfavorable ground conditions. One of the teachers suggested that we start to build small bridges in between the college and the hostels, I laughed when she brought up the idea, and the other teachers took it into consideration. So that tells you something about how bad it can get. I’m more worried about the power situation than bridges though. It has been a rough month electricity wise here at the college. We are supposed to have 6 hrs of power each day, but during the past 2 weeks we are lucky to get one hour in the morning and two hours at night. It isn’t anyone’s fault here at the school; I guess you can blame it on Malawian society. I say this b/c we need diesel to run the generator. So the school has a contract with Total, a fuel company that has gas stations all over Malawi. Recently the gov’t said that the diesel price is about to rise. Every time the price of gas us risen, Malawians go to all the gas stations and buy all the diesel they can and then sell it themselves. So Total was bought out of diesel early this week, therefore we can’t just go to a Total gas station and get the fuel we have already paid for. Now the school has to find someone on the side of the road and bargain out a deal to get enough gas for one day. Since we have already paid Total, the school has been scrambling around to try and find petty cash for these extra expenses. Then it all starts to make since, without power there is no pumping of water. Without power the pump cannot fill the water tanks and the tanks cannot flow into the showers and toilets, add a broken pump and a muddy well and it all makes since why there is no water. Hmm, well at least it makes since to me. I just hope when the rains do come, that no one minds a mzungu (white person) running around in his boxers with soap taking a shower in the rain.