Water, Water Everywhere... Except Where It's Supposed To Be

Dearest faithful readers of mine!

This entry will address one of the most important things in everyone's lives: WATER.  Ohhh, water, you sweet, wonderful, wet, life-giving thing... I have never known to appreciate you as I have this year!

Let's break down the discussion into three sections, discussing, in rising importance, the existence of and access to:
1) Warm Water,
2) Clean Water,
and
3) ANY Water.

Here goes.

1) We'll start with the least crucial of the three, Warm Water. 

For me and probably all of you reading this, access to heated water is such an accepted part of life that you may have never had to take a cold shower except at, say, church camp.  Or hosing off at the pool, or something like that.  In the United States and most of Europe, most houses simply come with a mechanism for heating water, and that's that.  Whether you live in a balmy climate or a freezing one, you've got acces. 

Here, in rural Costa Rica, the situation is different.  Here, warm water is a luxury.  Warm water is like dessert. Warm water is one of the best things about traveling the 6plus hours to San Jose.  Warm water is most definitely not to be taken for granted, and I'm first to admit that I'd never known how much I would miss it when I got here.

In Boruca, there is no warm water from the taps.  There is no water cooker, mixrowave, or functional stove in the house. 

As there is no warm water, my showers here in Boruca usually last 5 minutes or less.  The water is cold and comes from a tube that opens over your head-- that's it.  I'm lucky because there's high water pressure, which a lot of people don't have. 

But there's lots of good to be had from cold showering:
-Cold showering is good for circulation and your pores. 
-Cold showering conserves energy and water, which is excellent for the environment.
-Cold showering always gives me a sense of accomplishment, especially if it's cold and rainy outside and I have to choose between stepping under that chilly stream or going to bed dirty.

So it's not like I'm suffering, truly, for lack of warm water.  It's just that I have a newfound appreciation for it that I didn't have before, and one that I don't think I'm likely to lose. 

(Note: if you've never tried takinga  cold shower and want to understand, here's what you do: next time you want to shower, turn the water all the way to cold.  Wait a few seconds, then try to force yourself to step under it.  Try it! It's fun, I promise. ;D)

Moving on...

2) Clean water. 

When we arrived in Costa Rica, we were told to check out the water situation at our sites when we moved in to make sure it was safe.  Boruca, being a relatively large indigenous territory (the entire territory has 2,000 people and central Boruca, where I live, has about 700), has safe water.  Or so I thought!

The reality of it is that after a big rainstorm (which is a more and more frequent occurrence as the rainy season bears down upon us), some of the water isn't safe.  Sometiems there are backups in the pipes, or silt that gets in.  Sometimes a tap that was offering potable water one day offers water the next day that will make you sick.

And how do I know this? Becuase I've been there, done that.  I've drunk water of weird colors, water with stuff floating in it, water with dead bugs fished out of it.  I've been so sick at 3am that I wondered if cholera had made a return to Costa Rica (luckily, it hadn't.) Of course, this kind of thing is a rare, rare thing... but now that I've experienced what it's like to drink dirty water, it's made me all the more thankful for the clean stuff. 

So, yeah, count your blessings... and make sure one of them is clean water!

On to the last point...

3) ANY water at all. 

One of the great paradoxes about life here in Boruca has been that sometimes, for hours on end, the water gets turned off.... often while rain is pouring down outside (thus the title of this entry: 'Water, Water Everywhere... Except Where It's Supposed To Be'.)

And when I say 'sometimes', I mean 'every day, for months on end.'  For weeks, we woke up without water, lunched without water, and spent the afternoon wondering when we'd have water.  Each day when I went for a jog I had to wonder if I'd be able to shower when I got back home (and if you don't have water, chances are that NONE of the neighbors have it either, so that's not an option.)  More than once I hiked up the mountain to the home of the only family that had a direct pipe from a water source just to be able to dump a few buckets over my head.

When you're living like that, it changes you.  You horde water.  You fill up bottles and bottles and cups at night so that you can brush your teeth in the morning.  You wash your clothes in a flurry of activity whenever the water comes back on, even if only for a few minutes.  You fill up buckets so that you can fake a shower even if a real one isn't available.  You learn to ignore the dead fruit flies and drink the water anyway because there is no other viable option.  You bond with your family and your neighbors and your kids at school over who has water and who doesn't.  You carry water across the street, you rejoice when you can cook, you watch the hours and wait and wait for that telltale liquid rush in the background of all the sounds of the world that means one thing: life can go on. 

Because that's what it comes down to: Water is life.  El agua es vida.  As long as there is water, even only half of the time, this community can continue to flourish here in the middle of the mountains so far from the rest of the world.     

... this year has changed me in many ways, big and small.  I've eaten rambutans and pejibayes, somehow become a dog person, and learned Costa Rican slang.  But one of the biggest changes of all has been the development of a true, deep thankfulness for the wonder and power that is Water. 

That's all for tonight, folks. 
Abrazos desde Boruca!
Raquelita