Who would ever have thought that Nicaragua would have water shortages? I sure didn’t, when I was first told that I would be going to Nicaragua I imagined rainforests, wearing big rubber boots all the time and fighting my way through vines and swamps. How wrong and naïve I was, it is actually quite the opposite. I am in San Dionisio, the second poorest municipality in the department of Matagalpa in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is only the first month of the dry season and already the town wells have gone dry. My pila or water cistern in the back of the house probably can hold 150gallons and as of yesterday it has gone dry. I have a pile of clothes that I am scared to wash due to lack of water and I am now only showering once every 2 days or so, quite frequent for my taste. It is amazing how having to ration such a fundamental resource quickly makes you grab hold of reality and reprioritize your life. I am now kicking myself for those 20 minute showers I took in the United States or how I would see water as some infinite resource. Supposedly our town water is gone until the rains come around June. Therefore we are forced to rely on water trucks or pipas. Here is the tricky part, they come every 8 or 15 days, but you never know when. This is where it becomes a very serious game of telephone. I mentioned how quickly rumors spread; well imagine the wildfire for something as important as water.
Water is the main topic of discussion here. Like “how about them Yankees” or “how’s the weather” the main conversation starter is how are your barrels or pila. You can always ask someone if they know when the pipa is going to pass and you are guaranteed to get a different answer from each person. Even if you are able to get a general consensus about the day there is still the issue that there are 24hrs in a day. You never know when the truck is going to come and if they do finally state an hour, there is a fifty/fifty chance that they will actually show.
How this all relates to me is that I don’t have water. I have one barrel in my house that is full that is good for 50 gallons and has enough water for drinking, washing dishes, cooking, and showering. I can now shower with about 2 gallons or less and I reuse my dish water to water all my plants. I broke down yesterday and bought a second barrel because when the truck does come, they just fill whatever is in front of your house and move on. I can’t have them go behind my house and fill my pila so the strategy is that they fill the barrel in front and then I bucket brigade the water back to the pila and wait for me.
Now it is quite the event when the truck passes. Imagine what it was like when Paul Revere went racing through Lexington yelling that the British are coming. It is kind of like that, but except you have a horde of kids running around yelling that the water has come! Then like there was a car accident or fire we all rush outside and then just huddle around the scene of the crime or the truck. No one can do anything, but we all just stand there around the truck expecting that we may absorb the water either by proximity and somehow transfer it to our house. The conversations are always the same, but by being with everyone you feel like you are gaining support and all sharing the same burden. It is amazing how crises can bring people together. Thanks to this water shortage I have made more friends in my new neighborhood and I have found some good friends who even filled my pila while I was gone teaching today.
While I call it the great water crisis, it really isn’t that bad. I just need to be a little smarter about my water use and thanks to the help of my friends I will have a regular supply coming once a week. No more 3 gallon showers for me, but who needs to splurge. That just means I can boil the same sized pot of water and my showers will be that much hotter with less heat diffusion.
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