The water saga.

So, any of you who are on facebook know that we've been having UNENDING water sagas in this house. The main problem is that city water has stopped flowing. Well, sometimes --like maybe 2 times a week-- it comes for about 7 minutes at a time (only enough to fill about a 5 gallon bucket and make you mad.)

So we've been waterless. A lot. As I have probably mentioned, all the water for our house is stored on tanks on the roof. So, what Nick (and Hugues) have been doing a lot lately (roughly once a day) is making a run over to the Pye's house to fill up two 55 gallon barrels of water, as well as about 6-8 5 gallon buckets we have sitting around. They use a bucket brigade system there from Danny's basin to the big barrels and then drive back here and use the bucket brigade system to our basin, which we then, in turn, pump to the roof. So we're getting about 130ish gallons of water (minus spillage) per water run. The whole process takes about an hour to an hour and a half, and is very labor intensive, but will usually last us about 1 and a half - 2 days if we're all careful.

But at least it works. Well, let me be more accurate. It WAS working. Until the comedy of errors that is our life started happening this past week.

A few days ago, Nick and Hugues did their water-getting thing-- we flushed the two toilets that had been "collecting" (gag!) and went to bed. In the morning, we had no water. NONE. Nahomie told us that her shower handle broke as she was turning it off and so they couldn't turn the water off all night. (AND YOU'RE JUST TELLING ME ABOUT THIS NOW???) So it was all gone. Mikey fixed the shower for us-- it was all good.

But we went the day without water. Toilets collected. Nick and Hugues went to fill up again. And this time someone (presumably Jean Louis) left the outside shower dripping (which we didn't even knew WORKED because no one ever uses it.) And guess what happened? ALL the water dripped out-- in the morning we had no water.

Next night, Nick and Hugues go on a water run-- replenish our supply. Apparently same shower problem happens again in Nahomie's bathroom. Handle breaks off. She said it broke this time in the off position, BUT, ALL THE WATER IS GONE.

Yesterday, I went to Port Au Prince with the truck, so Nick couldn't make a water run. They were desperate when I got home. The stench of latrines were starting to creep out from the bathroom into other rooms of the house. It was bad. So he and Hugues (who has a great attitude even though I suspect he's beginning to really hate his job) go on ANOTHER bucket brigade water run. Good news--this time a shower doesn't leak out all the water. Bad news-- this is only because about halfway through unloading the water into the basin, the plug at the bottom gives way and water starts shooting out-- by the time we could get it back in place we've already lost about 1/2 the water. But we shrug it off (after many silent curse words passing through our heads, and maybe even a few crossing our actual lips) and commence filling, pumping at the same time so as to make sure we can get the water to the roof as we're dumping it in. We continue to bucket brigade it. And as I am pouring a bucket it, I notice the pump sounds funny. So I tell Nick, "Hon, I don't think it's actually pumping any water up." He climbs to the roof and I hear some more colorful expletives. No, in fact the water is NOT pumping. Because for whatever reason-- perhaps it lost its prime, perhaps a pipe is cracked (both of which happened LAST week in our water saga)-- it was not working. So... We're out. We're done.

We still have about 5 buckets of water left that we had planned to dump in the basin and pump. We told our family-- currently 12 people-- that THAT water has to last us all until we move tomorrow. Bathe out of a bucket. Do dishes out of a bucket. Do laundry out of buckets of water (... oh wait, you already do that...) But we're OUT. No more.

If it wouldn't be too much to ask, can you PLEASE pray that we have good water at the new house tomorrow??? It seems like a stupid thing to ask for in a country where people are do deeply poverty stricken that MANY people have no running water. But it makes life SO MUCH EASIER.

Nick silently repeating the words, "I love my life, I love my life, I love my life..."

Hugues toting water with a smile.

Nick and Fritzie filling buckets. Neither smile is real.

Then this is just totally random-- but while all this was occurring, I snapped this pic of Jos-- which in the end, made us ALL smile real smiles and laugh out loud.