Water For Days! Kinda.

After over a full year of dealing with the inconsistency of water availability, I am no longer surprised when water doesn't pour out the faucet when I open the tap. In our neighborhood of Guadalupe, El Molino, water is available in the mornings from around 5:30am to 1:30pm. Tanks of water are filled up daily to be used for bucket baths, cooking, washing dishes and pour-flushing the toilet in the afternoons once the water is turned off for the day. When the tanks run out, my family has a well in the backyard and, since I still can't figure out the flick of the wrist required to fill up the pail, my host brother is kind enough to pull water from it when I ask nicely. 

Of all the things I could have been forced to live without, running water all day long was definitely not the worst. I quickly become used to washing dishes with a jug of water, using face wipes to wash my face at night, saving my showers for the morning (not the best after an evening run, but who am I trying to impress?) and awkwardly flushing the toilet with a bucket of water (sometimes two if the first was executed in poor form). But one day I came home to find my host dad and brother making some noise in the backyard and realized they were constructing an platform for an elevated tank! A tank which we could fill up every morning to provide running water throughout the entire day!

Julio setting up the frame for the platform
Jorge mixing the concrete. It seems so silly I took multiple classes on concrete and its properties and here my 15-year old host brother can just mix some sand, cement and water together and call it a day.
My host dad really wanted me to check out the framework but I was so scared on the ladder I just held my arm up and took a few random photos without actually looking at it.
Watching them prepare the platform, thinking about what it would be like to have running water all day again, I became super excited. Then a few weeks passed and there was still no sign of the tank itself. I figured my family was saving up money for that and eventually forgot about it, falling back into the normal water saving routines. In April, I went away for a week taking the GRE in Lima and celebrating afterwords with an Easter trip to the Colca Canyon in Arequipa (I'll catch you up on that trip soon enough). When I came home, the first thing my sister Juana said was, "Tenemos agua todo el día!!" We have water all day!! The  day had finally come. The tank was bought and hooked up and we now had running water all day long.

I felt so silly beaming back at her, mirroring her pride in our elevated tank, but I was so happy. Granted, sometimes our neighborhood's water pressure isn't strong enough to fill up the tank entirely or someone forgets to open the pipe allowing water to enter the tank in the morning and we find ourselves with no water in the afternoon once again but I still find myself marveling over the sink as I brush my teeth at night or flush the toilet when it's way past 1:30pm. It's the little things, right?
 
Isn't it a beaut?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bienvenidos a Guadalupe

Image
It’s hard to believe that I am only now entering the fourth week of my two years of service. On top of our ten weeks of training, Perú 20 has really only been in country for a little over three months. Yes, that can sound like a lot but in the grand scheme of a 27-month adventure it’s just the beginning. The first couple weeks at site were pretty difficult, which had absolutely nothing to do with my new host family, the people I work with or the community. My biggest struggles came from the transition itself. I went from the being surrounded by English-speaking friends from training and a training staff cheering us on every baby step of the way to a new home, new routine and a slightly scary sense of freedom. Training was super structured and demanding, but here I’m my own jefa and I set up my own schedule. For some people that can be very exciting but for me, major transitions freak me out. Thankfully, poco a poco , a true Peruvian phrase, is becoming more of a way of ...
Read more

All Aboard! Puno to Cusco - The Perez Family in Peru, Part IV

Image
As my wonderful and talented ghost writer continues chronicling our trip through Peru, my blog moves from Puno to Cusco on a kick ass train ride. Hope you enjoy Part IV of The Perez Family in Peru! There were a couple ways for us to get from Puno to our next stop, Cusco.   When we were planning the trip, we had seen and heard about train rides through this stretch of the country, and we decided to give it a try.   We took Peru Rail’s Andean Explorer (check out the journey on their site with a much better description than I can provide at perurail.com ), which is a ten-hour luxury train ride from Puno to Cusco. It took us between mountains and clouds and between mountains and highlands.   The Andean Explorer is beautifully decorated in the style of the Pullman trains of the twenties.   Marlee and Jamie with the train on one of the stops along the way. Love this photo! Bright and early, we were ready for a relaxing ride. We sat in a dining car, whi...
Read more

Prospero Año y Felicidad

Image
When I was younger, New Year's meant having my best friend over, feasting on sweet treats and a ton of sparkling apple cider and staying up waaay past midnight. One year I was lucky enough to be put on the guest list of a swanky party at the very top of the Bank of America building in the city to watch my dad's band play the event. Then it became more of watching movies with my fam and toasting to the new year at midnight (I mean there were a few wild years during the college times, but nothing to worry the 'rents about). Last year, my mom, sister and I were so consumed with the movie we were watching - NO, I think we were actually reading! We were so consumed with the books we were reading (to be fair, I was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ) that when I glanced at the clock and 2012 was less than a minute away and we hadn't even popped the apple cider! So, of course, we paused the TV so we wouldn't miss the ball dropping, poured ourselves some apple cider i...
Read more