Rainy Ruminations

            After more than a month-long hiatus, running water has returned to my house here in Upstation. We’re far from completely out of the woods; the rains have just started to come over the past few days and I fully expect my water supply to be spotty for the next few weeks until the rainy season is fully established. I was better prepared for the end of rainy season this year than I was the last time; I knew which neighbors had wells and the importance of water rationing and storage. But despite my preparation and the generosity of my neighbors, the last month was extremely stressful. My cleanliness standards and remaining wardrobe fell to unprecedented levels. Even my sleeping schedule was affected-I awoke on more than one occasion convinced I heard a neighbor using an outdoor tap only to be disappointed when my sink refused to flow.

            Rationally, I can accept that the stress that I feel towards my water situation is completely unreasonable. I have never completely run out of my reserves, and there always places to fill jugs (or send motorcycle boys to fill jugs, an option that I have never yet had to resort to). Some of my neighbors don’t have any plumbing system installed in their homes and send their children daily to haul water from nearby wells or streams. Some of my fellow Volunteers live in villages with no formal water delivery system and rely on neighborhood children for their daily water deliveries. One Volunteer is so well integrated that she walks all the way across her village to the one clean tap (that only works two days each week) and hauls her own water home on her head. Now that I’m over 18 months into my service, I think I can accept that I will never be that well integrated. I allowed a high-school boy to push a wheelbarrow containing my water jugs back to my house this week, and didn’t even feel guilty about it.

            I was talking about my water anxiety with my friend Anna, and she offered me her theory of “Control and Peace Corps Volunteers”. Essentially, the theory is that PCVs come from America, the land of independence and personal freedom. Built into our society is the idea that we have an implicit amount of control over our lives, within reason. We thrive on the belief that we have control over our own destinies and can create our own opportunities.

            On the other hand, much of the Cameroonian culture and way of doing things is based on ceding control to a higher power. For children this power often comes in the form of their parents (much more than in American society), and adults and children alike are quick to defer to a higher spiritual being. When you add in the daily inconsistencies and delays that are a part of life here, the cultural willingness to relinquish absolute control is all but a necessity.

            So I’ve been thinking a lot about the extent to which American PCVs are able to integrate into our respective communities, and why something like inconsistent running water continues to be such a stressor for me. After all, there are so many aspects of my life back home that I was able to give up with much less frustration. I can handle crowded and delayed bus rides, slow or nonexistent Internet connections, and even (to a certain extent) my permanent status as a visible outsider. But for some reason the water situation continues to eat at me, and the only conclusion that I’ve come to is that it relate back to the control idea. My issue isn’t that I think I’ll never have water again. It’s that I have no idea when that water will come back and I’m completely at the mercy of the municipal water system, a less than reliable operation. If my water-a basic human need-isn’t guaranteed, I have trouble focusing on much else. My friends and neighbors have played this game much longer than I have, but they also have been subject to similar systems their whole lives. If anything is a guarantee, it is that nothing ever is.