Essay #23 (Water)

Living in the desert presents numerous challenges--sunburn, sandstorms, difficult farming, but most importantly, obtaining water. Everyone has their own system. Some have wells where the water is trucked in once in a while, some have canal water piped in from Ashgabat, and some have distillers.

In the city we have running water which is fairly clean but non-drinkable. It runs from about 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. and again from about 6 p.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. Even when running, it won't go upstairs to my bathroom. When I first arrived we had a pump that would get water upstairs when on, but not enough to shower, say, on off hours. One day, though, our pump died. Struck then with the horror which all the not-wealthy families face, we filled buckets and bathtubs during "on" hours and prepared for the worst. This system is common. In every public bathroom there is a toilet with a bucket of water on the floor in order to manually flush. The sink is a bucket and cup for pouring water over your hands.

So it was fortuante for us that it was during our non-pump week that there were 2 days where the city turned off the water altogether. Now picture the modern kitchen with no water. We boiled and filtered all cooking water, we had pails for dish water, the toilets sat unflushed for 2 days (foo!), and no one dared use the precious water for a shower. Our supply held us over, but all conversation out of my mother's mouth was about how one can't live without running water. How terrible is life without water!

We got a brand new pump that week. I can now shower any time of day (which, I have to say, doesn't convince me to do it more frequently), we can do laundry and dishes simultaneously, and we don't even have to drink water that sat in the bathtubs for a week. I'm definitely settling near a lake or stream later in life. I guess that rules out Phoenix.