Water, water everywhere, part 2

I stuck my head outside my door. I figured in the middle of the daily siesta would be my best chance. My best chance for no one to see me. My best chance for no one to watch as the stranger struggles to carry water from the well.

I had watched the women do it many times. And I gathered water, and carried it back on my head, once, but the pump is further from the well, and I felt like making as little of a spectacle of myself as possible that afternoon.

I crossed the two doorways to the well, grabbed the green rope and pulled up my first bucket. After three and a half, most of the second bucket ended up on me and the ground, my basin was full. I tried to lift it onto my head, but my arms, already weak from pulling up the water, couldn’t do it.

I struggled to put the basin back down into the top of the well. I shook my arms out and conceded to carry the water back American-style, which meant it took me longer and I ended up more damp than when the mamas who live in the concession when they carry their water back.

As you may have noticed, water is a big issue for me here. But it isn’t just for me. For my entire village, how and where they get water is a huge issue.

Most of my village gets its water from pumps. I don’t know anyone who has running water in his or her house. Until a couple years ago, there was only one pump to serve the entire village of 3,200 people. There are now four, and housing groups, like mine, have a well inside walls. It isn’t as clean as pump water, but for dishes and laundry, it does the trick.

Most of the time, it’s just inconvenient to get water. It’s hot; water is heavy and every basin you think will be the last just manages to come up short.

When it turns from inconvenient to a problem is during the hot season; the season that we’re coming up on next.

I’ve heard stories of what it was like before the other pumps were built. Women would walk for kilometers to find a pump that wasn’t empty. The price at the pumps would shoot up from 25 Francs (what it is now) to 250. People would wait at the pump for hours for their turn to get water.

I never realized how much of a commodity water was until I moved here. That morning, when I had run out of water, I dreaded the sweat-drenched afternoon of slowly refilling the storage container in the my kitchen.

But there is no other option. Either carry water back or don’t wash my dishes. Either get the upper-body workout of the week or don’t take a shower. Either have my neighbors look at me questioningly or don’t have clean clothes.

I only made it three trips back and forth before my neighbor took the basin out of my hands and finished the job for me.