A most interesting event happened Saturday at about 3pm. Almost the entire city of Dakar lost access to running water! I had been out with the family visiting friends, and when we came back, all I wanted to do was wash my hands. I immediately went to the bathroom, turned the tap on, and nothing happened. I told my mom, and she seemed very unconcerned about it. She just told Moussou to bring out the reserve water. Her nonchalance about the situation made me assume that the water would be out for like an hour or something. I think my mom thought that too. So we all took showers. Then, in my stupidity, I took a Number 2 in the bathroom (forgetting that toilets need water to work). We had to dump the rest of the reserve water into the toilet to push the bowl down. I felt a little guilty and embarrassed, but no worries because the water would be back on soon!
That night Moussou and I went dancing. When I came back, all sweaty, I really wanted to shower, but the water was still not on. At this point I was a little worried – will the water be on tomorrow??
The next morning we all awoke to, yet again, no water. We learned at this point that there had been a public announcement on the radio warning people that the water was going to go off for 24 hours while they repaired the pipes. Oops! Too bad we don’t listen to the radio in our household. And now we have no reserve water left, not even to rinse off or use the bathroom.
Sunday I spent the day at the beach (again). I went with some American friends, and met up with a Senegalese friend, Paco. Together, we all swam, body-surfed, and chilled. It was a nice afternoon, but I couldn’t find a bathroom to go in. So I was really looking forward to using the bathroom at home, as well as showering. Too bad the water STILL wasn’t on when I got home from the beach. At this point, my mom was starting to get a little mad – how can they deprive us of running water for more than 24 hours? She brought up a good point, though, that without water, people are getting very dirty very fast, and the cholera levels are certainly going to rise.
So, Sunday night we all went to bed without having taken a shower or gone to the bathroom all day long. In my mind I was hoping hard that during the course of the night the water would go back on. I was starting to smell myself, and I really needed to poop.
Monday morning, still no water. This is getting a little ridiculous. Since I had no class til 5pm, I decided to go to the beach again, because at least there’s water there! But first I thought I would run to school to see if they had a reserve of water there. But, they didn’t. I did however get to use their restrooms! That was beautiful! And since I was there so early, they were still clean (when I went back for class at 5pm, they smelled so bad you couldn’t even walk in there – apparently everyone had to go as bad as the next).
Anyway, so I went to the beach with my really good friend Makha and his 2 little cousins, Mohammed and Fatima. We had a great time, though I got kinda burnt.
When I got back home from school that night, it had been 2.5 days since I’d taken a shower, and I’d been to the beach twice so I had salt and sand everywhere on my body (and in my hair). I was soooooo dirty! But still, no water. We had a simple meal that required no water to prepare, and went to bed.
This morning at 6:30 my mom woke me up – the water is back on!! Take a shower now, because we don’t know how long it will last. Of course, I immediately jumped and ran to the shower. Wow, water has never felt so good! After, we all filled up a lot of bottles, just in case the water goes back out. When I left for school 2 hours later, the water was still running, but I know not to get my hopes up – I could get back from school tonight and be in the same situation as the past 2.5 days, albeit a little cleaner.
The whole experience, though, was really neat. Even during the water loss, I was trying to keep a good attitude about the whole thing. I kept telling myself that this is part of the experience. Losing the water makes you realize how important water is, and how we have so greatly built our lives around water. Also, I got really good at taking bucket showers and using the bare minimum of water. I would go to the store, buy a 1.5 litre bottle of water, and not even use all of it to rinse off and brush my teeth. The whole experience reminded me a little of going to Bonnaroo (that music festival in Tenessee). There, every morning, you would take the first two hours of you day to go and retrieve a little water from one of the few fountains on the premise. Because it took you so much effort and time, you would use such a small amount for a morning rinse-off, and try to conserve your bucket of water for the whole day.
Water
