Water water everwhere, and not a drop to drink (or bathe in, or wash dishes, or...)

Ah, yes, our first experience running out of water. We all knew it was coming right? But first, a weekend update...

This may have been the most "normal" of weekends we've spent in Cape Verde thus far (minus the lack of water, but we're not to that point yet). On Thursday, we went out for pizza with some friends. Then on Friday, we had dinner at the other PCV's house in Porto Novo. It was an interesting mix of American and Cape Verdean - the people, the food and the drinks. C made some fabulous lasagna and a Cape Verdean fruit and cream dessert. I whipped up some garlic bread and brought some red wine, and a couple other folks brought the fixin's for some Caiparinhas, sort of the Cape Verdean equivilant of Mojitos. The food was great, the wine was...well...cheap, and the caiparinhas were perfect for a relaxing island evening, sipping on the balcony under the stars. Around midnight we decided to go out to a local club near me and Josh's place. Typically people here don't go out until that late and then stay out until dawn. This is most likely why this weekend is the first time Josh and I ventured out - we're just getting too old for that!

We stopped first at our place to show folks around, and it was nice to have company and play host for a while. I'd forgotten how much I like to have people over to hang out. Then we trotted off to the club, which in the end we decided not to go into after sitting outside and mingling for a bit - I think we were all tired. The next day people came over to our place to veg a bit and enjoy some fresh brewed mint iced green tea. We did some laundry (in record time I might add: 38 minutes!) and then went off to catch a soccer game, which I have to admit I still find borring. BUT the idea was to mingle with the community, to spend more time doing with people in Porto Novo do, and thus the goal was achieved. After we went for pizza again and then took a nap before our CV friend took us out to the other discotheque in town. We still spent a good amount of time outside, but this time we actually went in (honestly it seems like more people hang out outside the clubs than go inside...plus there are usually small bars and food stands outside that you can go to, which are cheaper than the drinks inside, so I think part of it is a money issue). The club was crazy. Layout wise it was pretty similar to clubs in America, but there was this one very disorienting strobe light that drove us nuts all night. I immediatly was dragged out to dance (being the only white woman in the club and being taken for a tourist) and had to politely peel several very intoxicated men off of me, who's grasp of the english language appeared to stop at "I like you. You are very beautiful." It is definately a good idea for women to go to clubs with men they trust who can come to their rescue if necessary. Of course, this applies in the States as well, who are we kidding. Our evening ended around 4am at which point we exhaustedly fell into a blissful sleep.

Okay so let me backtrack for a minute here, to when we were doing laundry on Saturday. Josh went up to the roof later that night to take our clothes down and when he did, he saw two people we didn't recognize on top of the water tanks taking water out. The way water works at our place, apparently, is that water pumped up from the street to the roof of the house, fills a cement tank on the roof of the house (each apartment should have one), and then when you turn your water on the water flows from the tank into your sink with the assistance of gravity. So when I heard people on the roof (no one uses the roof but me and Josh, so I can tell when people walk up the stairs and new it was strange), Josh went to investigate. Each tank has a lock on it so pepole can't steal the water, but one of the tanks had the lock busted off and the two people had climbed on top of the 7ft tanks and were dipping in to fill buckets of water. Josh asked them what was up and they said they had no water in the apartment downstairs. On their way down, we showed them in our apartment that we did, in fact, still have water. Also, neither of the people on the roof were people we'd ever seen in the apartment downstairs, so we thought maybe they'd come in off the street to steal our water. I talked to the other PCV in town who confirmed this is done and that we needed to get a new lock for our tank.

Sunday, we notice our water pressure seems low, and then all of a sudden it stops. As in our toilet won't flush, our sinks are dry. We call the other PCV again and she tells us we need to wait until Monday to go to the water company. In the mean time, we have no water to cook, bathe, do dishes, drink....all those things that you do with water. So, we did what every good Cape Verdean would do in this situation: we climbed on top of the water tanks on top of house and took water out of the tank with the broken lock (which obviously wasn't ours, since our tank was dry). It was pretty hilarious - Josh laying on his stomach 7ft up on this huge concrete tank, dipping a pitcher into the water, dumping into my bucket below, then bringing it all downstairs to fill a wash tub to bathe in and the sink to do dishes in. Yes, probably not the most honest thing in the world to do, but seeing as we had to go to work the next day and it would have been two days without a shower, it seemed to be the best option. Oh plus, we were thirsty!

So the rest of Sunday we hung low, not wanting to torture the rest of our community with our unbathed selves, and wanting to spend some time alone since we'd been hanging out with others so much that weekend. Monday, the other PCV came with us to the water company, and it turns out they turned off our water for six months of non payment, and that to turn it back on, we had to pay the six months of back payments PLUS a fee to turn it back on. Given that we'd only been here for a month, and that it meant the water had been turned off for a while (seeing as we drained the whole tank...), Peace Corps obviously said they would reimburse us for the cost the months we weren't there and the cost to turn it back on. So we paid up and waited another 24 hours before the water actually came on. Fortunately we've been pretty good about learning how to conserve water, so we needed very little to get by for a couple of days.

I don't know if there is a moral to the story, except to pay your water bill...except that our first bill arrived after they'd already shut our water off...and we don't really understand why the water to the whole building was shut off, ie the apartment downstairs....or if we somehow paid for their water to get turned back on too...or if they don't pay their water, if ours will get shut off again too...but I guess the moral could be that water is good. And you miss it when it's gone. A lot.

The end.