Kipilefti

Walking back to my house this evening, I noticed a kid at the tap in the back, filling a bucket with water. As a rule this would be par for the course here, but today it made me unutterably happy: the water had been out for more than a week, and on the walk home I’d been mentally weighing the fact that I really needed to bathe against the fact that it would use up most of my remaining water. I only had water at all thanks to a fortuitous heavy storm, the first of the season, last Thursday, which netted me 80L of water.

So, so many things I can’t do without water! As soon as I walked in the door I started refilling all my buckets (130L worth–I filled them all this time. May sound like a lot but think about all the things you use water for in a day) in case the water cut out again, then started heating water for a bath. I washed dishes, flushed the toilet, washed my underwear (which was getting to be a desperate situation: only one clean pair left!), mopped the floor to get rid of the smell of cat pee, cleaned the toilet, started boiling more water for drinking once the bathwater was ready. Bathed, wonderfully. Every time I bathe here I rejoice in being clean, and then forget how wonderful it is until the next week.

And now I’m clean and tired from all that work, but deeply happy to think about the full buckets of water in the bathroom and kitchen. Even if the water goes off again, it should last for another week.