Water, Water...nowherrreee

    As of December, our region in Jamaica has officially entered the dry season. Where we once had water tumbling out of our gutters and cascading into our 1000 gallon rain catchment tank we now have… less than 60 gallons left. Our own personal water reduction emergency measures are in place…

• The toilet never gets flushed unless there is something brown in it.  
• When the toilet does get flushed it goes with the least amount of water possible… we have done experiments on exactly how little water is required to eliminate the waste.
• We take “bucket baths” which require exactly 1 gallon for each of us
• All rinse water gets reused in the toilet
• We minimize all miscellaneous water use, i.e. when washing and rinsing dishes, brushing teeth, hand-washing clothes, etc.
• We pee outside whenever possible

     In addition to this we boil all of our drinking water now. In general Peace Corps recommends doing this all the time, but it is only now that our water is beginning to get obviously stagnate that we feel truly compelled to take this action. I think that when we saw the third swimming worm in our water cup it finally dawned on us that the time had come to start boiling.

     How did we go from a full 1000 gallon catchment tank just over a month and a half ago? It is a bit puzzling to us. Because we have indoor plumbing (the first time for Matt in 15 years?) we run through more water than we usually expect. We also got spoiled during the rainy season, using water all the time whenever we wanted for whatever we wanted. We certainly aren’t frivolous, but somehow it went away. Rural Jamaica isn’t known for its high plumbing standards so we wonder about possible leaky or cracked pipes hidden from view, or that somehow the tank may be plumbed incorrectly so that it back-drains into the main system. Some community members speculate that the water is be “teefed” (stolen) in the night or when we are away.

     Regardless, we will get by, and we are thrifty enough to make do with whatever water we do have, however little it may be. If worse comes to worse, then like many of our community members we too will make the trek to one of the two local springs and haul our water in five gallon buckets, by hand, just like we did back in Alaska.