Water Shortages

We hear that parts of the US are facing water shortages. For many people here in Mozambique that is part of the annual seasonal change. The water in Gondola and surrounding area is not complete gone, but personal wells are drying up, meaning that people who have a well in their yard may be pulling up only 1-2 buckets of water a day instead of unlimited or not have any water from that well. So they are having to walk a little farther to find water.

This is affecting our house as well. We arrived home a few weeks ago to discover that the well outside our house that is shared between the four apartments in our building, the chicken coops out back and a few other neighbors is only giving a few buckets of dirty water a day. Because the owner of the well is also the owner of the chickens, they get first priority; then whoever is next, from what I can tell. So we are last in line because we send Novencio get water from the well after he has fetched the drinking and cooking water. Consequently, we are now using that water for washing clothes as well because often Novencio gets back too late for there to be any water clean enough to even want to use.

Thus, we are learning more how to conserve water. Noemia uses about 2 20-liter jugs to do any laundry. Because of our experiences in Mandie with the sand dams project, we have learned to take lean bucket baths. We can each bathe with about 3-4 of water in a 5-gallonish size bucket, though a nice amount for me is about 6-7 liters using the solar shower my mom sent us. We reuse water a lot. Much of it means collecting the water we used to wash dishes or our hands and then using that to flush the toilet. Joél uses rinse water from the dishes to water our plants.

It’s not always easy to be calculating how much water I can use until the next time Novencio comes. I think that if I conserve water now, it will mean that we might have water longer. I dream of a day when I can take a 10 minute shower, adjust the temperature to what I want and not even care how much water I use; but that is the dream of a person from the developed world.

The rainy season is beginning. We have had a few good rains that came down slowly and lasted all day. The farmers that we talk to are excited because some of them have corn coming up that is already up to their knees in their low lands. The start of the rainy season promises to fill the underground streams that fill wells. However, as much as I would like it to mean that the wells are filled immediately when it rains, that just doesn’t happen. We have heard people predicting good rains because of the quality of rains and how early they are arriving. This is also Gondola—land that though we saw it turn brown, never was really brown and completely dry like Mandie.

Mandie had rain two weekends ago. Fortunately it did not flood or fill in the trenches the communities dug. The clock is racing. The cement arrived two weeks ago, so we hope that under the guidance of the Extensionists, the communities will be able to build solid walls. If the sand dams are completed and it rains, the dams will begin collecting sand and thus water. Until then, people here in Mozambique continue to walk for and face the lean months of food and water as they anticipate good rains and their harvest to refill their storage bins.

Written Nov. 6, 2008