Water

On Wednesday morning, they started working on our road, and cut off our water. The road is blocked; we have to go around a detour to get in and out of our house. Since we're in the part of the road that is blocked, we dodge around the "Road Closed" sign to get in and out. I hope they might actually be doing some serious work on the road, like making proper drainage ditches and paving it, but I'm trying to keep my hopes down, since they most likely won't be spending that much money on it. As a side note, when they were working on the road last week they didn't close the road, but had people drive under the arm of the big Cat machine that had a scoop at the end. I had a moment of panic - seriously, there was a huge yellow bulldozer thing on one side of the road, and it was scooping a giant ditch on the other side, and everyone was just waiting for a moment and then whizzing underneath while it was still working away! But I survived and the truck didn't get smashed or anything.

When we got home to discover that our water had been cut off on Wednesday evening, we made do with eating some leftovers and figured it would be back on the next day. Well, Thursday morning arrived with no water. Skipping showering for one day isn't that big of a deal; we just went to work kind of smelly and greasy. This is Africa, nobody notices too much if you're past due for showering, since you get kind of sweaty every day, anyway.

Thursday was supposed to be laundry day, but that obviously didn't happen. It was also the day for the vet to come give the cats their rabies shots. (Yes, vets make house calls in Tanzania for everything from shots to surgery.) Betsy, the sweety, tiny little girl cat, went wild and bit me pretty hard. I couldn't wash off the blood and clean my wound at home, though, because of the water issue. So, back to the office I went (going the long way around, which was getting kind of annoying by then), and washed my puncture there.

That night our water came back for about an hour, enough time for me to dart into the bathroom and shower, fill the water filter bucket, and make pizza for dinner. It went out again before I had time to do any dishes. The next day, Friday, was totally without water all day. We were starting to run low on our bucket of drinking water, hadn't flushed the toilet in over 24 hours, and Andrew hadn't showered for several days. We had some leftover pizza for dinner, at least, but we used our last two forks and last two plates for eating it. Pretty much every dish we had was stacked on the counter, waiting for water. We realized that Andrew needed some of his clothes for his Uganda trip, and so took a few pairs of trousers and shirts over to our friends the Nicholls' house, where they saved the day by doing a load for us in their washing machine.

Saturday morning I went running, as usual. This time, however, I packed along my shampoo and towel, and our friends the Hills' saved the day by letting me shower at their house. I think I smelled badly enough that they didn't need any convincing of the importance of some water! Back at home, Andrew used most of our final 1/2 bucket of water to clean up a bit. We were down to 1/4 of a 5 gallon bucket as our only water in the house.

Saturday afternoon was missionary fellowship, so we went there (held at our friends the Turners' house) and drank lots of water and used their facilities, which flushed wonderfully well. Upon arriving home we checked the water first thing, but no luck. However, about halfway through watching a movie that night, we heard the ping ping ping of water coming out of the bathroom faucet and landing in the metal soup pot we'd put under the tap! Hallelujah! We both leapt into action, unsure of how long the water was going to stay on this time. We flushed the toilet about three times, Andrew showered and filled the drinking water filter, and I washed dishes like a madwoman.

This morning we checked the water first thing - still on! Not sure if they'll turn it off again tomorrow to continue with road work or not, but at least we've had one beautiful watery day here.