Not Thirsty Yet.

I want to talk about water. I’m sure that few of you will be surprised to learn that prior to coming to Cameroon, it wasn’t a subject that I thought much about. Sure, as an Environmental Studies major I had the option of taking a few courses focused on water, but I bypassed them in favor of classes that seemed more relevant to my life and interests. And of course, Plant Biology. So upon graduation I had a sense that water accessibility is a problem in some places, but I had no way of visualizing it.

            Growing up, there were occasionally summers that my county was officially “in a drought”. But other than dying grass and the lack of rainy days, there wasn’t much evidence to support this claim. After all, water always came out of the faucet when I turned it on, and I even caught my neighbors watering their grass, much to my confusion. Weren’t we supposed to be conserving water?

            So with these experiences I came to Cameroon, blissfully ignorant about the situation I was about to face. I even decided not to purchase a portable water filter, confident that the Peace Corps would provide me with the necessary tools for survival. The first sign that the water situation was more dire than I had imagined came within the first few minutes after we stepped off the plane, when we were all handled bottles of water and told that under no circumstances were we to drink the water at the hotel. We had been traveling for about 36 hours at this point, so I accepted the bottle and focused on more pressing issues, such as ensuring that my suitcases had made the trip with us.

            The next morning the situation became much more real when I woke up and turned on the shower to discover that nothing more than a cool breeze came out. I still wasn’t quite ready to deal with what this could mean, so I took a baby-wipe bath and decided to proceed with my day. Unfortunately, this was the day that we got our ID card pictures taken, and my photo still stands testament to my decision that morning.

            When we got to Bafia, I was exposed to a different sort of water problem: there was no running water in the whole town. Many of the homes that my friends and I stayed in had piping and water fixtures, but it was more of an archeological relic than a practical system. Bafia had running water as recently as the 1980s, but (as the story goes) the residents and town government didn’t maintain the system and it fell into disarray. What this meant for my friends I and was that we were suddenly reliant on the array of forages and wells that scattered the town. I was particularly lucky; my family had built the best forage in town right outside the front door about ten years prior to our stay and I had access to it whenever I wanted. Some of my friends were less fortunate: they either had to haul water a great distance or wait on line at 6:00AM to use my family’s forage (it was locked for most of the day). As much as carrying water was a chore, it was at least a consistent one. The water never ran from the taps and it was always available from the forage. My family’s forage had the additional advantage of being covered and therefore clean-my host family members even drank from it without any apparent problems.

            When we all got our post assignments and talked to our predecessors we quickly became aware of the various ways that people in Cameroon obtain their water. My friend Anna’s town has running water, but only between the hours of 6:30 and 7:00AM. To me that sounded pretty terrible (I’m not a morning person), but she and her postmate disagree. To them, it’s a consistent system, and they’re not left guessing when the water will run. Many of the people in my stage have no running water at all and most of them hire children to fetch water from local wells. I think the going rate is somewhere around $.20-.40 per bidon of water (maybe about 20 liters). And as inconvenient as that can me, it’s consistent at least. Until a few weeks before IST, I thought my water situation was pretty perfect. By some minor miracle my host organization managed to find me an apartment with both consistent electricity and running water. I didn’t even know that was possible here. I was so confident in the consistency of these services that I invested in a water heater for my shower and endured the grueling process of having it installed. See a previous post for more details on that. But the installation was successful and I took a few blissful hot showers. But a few days after the heater was installed, I had a new problem. My water heater installation coincided with the end of the dry season, and water was scarce everywhere. My water stopped flowing from the taps. At first I was confused, and assumed the problem was temporary. But a day passed, and there was still no water.

Given that I had previously had no problems with water, I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I should be and had very little water stored. My neighbors were much better prepared. It turned out that the water usually came on in the early morning hours and my neighbors took the opportunity to fill up every available water container. Despite my abovementioned status as a non-morning person, I did what I thought I had to do. I woke up early and tried to fill my buckets while the water was flowing. This worked great, for exactly one day. After that, the water stopped flowing at all. I didn’t know what to do. Luckily, this crisis came right around the time of IST and I dealt with my water problems by abandoning my apartment for two weeks.

The main point of this post is to attempt to portray how stressful semi-running water can be. I’ve found that my mood is fairly directly correlated with the current status of the water, which is not something I’m comfortable with. My coping mechanisms are varied; I’ve caught myself delaying bathing and planning my meals around the number of dirty dishes that they will create. Today started off as a good day-I woke up to running water and ambitiously decided to tackle the mountain of laundry that had been accumulating since IST. My luck continued throughout the task and I was even able to replace dirty rinse water with clean (which is in no way a promise that my clothes finished the process clean or free of soap…). I accomplished the task and (feeling proud of myself) even cleaned the floor of my balcony. Nothing left to do but take a well-deserved shower. Of course, when I turned on the water and prepared to get a fresh start to my day, I discovered that the water had been cut yet again. What a soul-crusher. At least we are in the early stages of wet season (meaning we’ve traded endless dust for mud) and a consistent water supply is hopefully in the near future. At least until next February/March.

On a similar note, I was in Main Market a few days ago and found those “jellies” sandals that many of us had as children available for sale in adult sizes (you can find anything in Main Market!). I couldn’t help myself. I bought a pair. Among the best $3 I’ve spent recently. And all my neighbors tell me how well prepared I am for rainy season!

TL,DR: Water is currently a pretty serious stressor in my life. Hopefully the advent of rainy season will change this soon.