así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

Apparently all I needed to do to make the water come on was to write a blog about it.  The water came on this morning at around 6 am so I don´t have to worry anxiously if I´m going to run out of water mid-shower.  Despite the inconvenience of not necessarily knowing if we will have water, I think it´s pretty cool that I can still go and visit the site where the water comes from.  I mean, I realize, having a well, that I can also do this at home, but so many people can´t.  Anyone who has city water…where does the water come from?

Someone asked why it was that I got pink highlights in the first place.  I have a friend in beauty school here and she needs people to practice on.  She cut  my hair at the beginning of the year and the pinkness and the braid are the latest addition.  I´ve also gotten a pedicure from her…all for free

I´ve changed the title of the blog…it took me a long while to figure out how to do so, otherwise I would have changed it awhile ago.  When I first named it ´así es´, I didn´t fully understand the meaning of the phrase.  So now the title means, ¨this is how it is… from my point of view, pues¨ as opposed to the more arrogant ¨this is how it is.¨  Sorry that it was so haughty for such a long time.

the green in the forefront is watered on a regular basis. the women are a part of the garden group in zacango.

I think we’re just about out of water. We have city water in our house, which means we don’t have to pay for it. The older houses in town have city water, but someone (I assume the government) is refusing to put taps in the newer houses that are built because there is so little water available. People who don’t have taps need to buy water. We have a tap that empties into a small cistern, from which we pump water up onto the cistern on the roof. The water in our house then, is all gravity fed (besides the initial pump up).

The city water, however, has not come for over a week now. It usually flows pretty early in the morning and if we don’t pump water up to the roof or turn off the tap, the ground cistern will overflow. Our ground cistern is pretty small. People often build fairly large ground cisterns so they don’t have to worry about overflow. In our last house we had a huge, underground cistern and we were never lacking for water. Now we’re living more like most people we work with. That’s not true. Since we don’t have to pay for water or walk two hours every day in order to get 80L of water, we’re still a far cry from the people in the communities. But we do pay even more attention to the amount of water we use.

We shower in a large tub/bucket thing and then use the water that we showered with to flush the toilet. It turns out that you can flush a toilet just by pouring water into the bowl. Our setup is as follows: we stand in our shower water (sort of like an extra long bath for the feet) in the big bucket. After the shower, we pour the water (or as much water will fit) into a pail that is beside the toilet. After we use the toilet, about a half a pailful of water will flush everything down. We also have a bowl in the sink and the water that we use to wash our hands, we add to the pail as well. We also use our shower water to water our houseplants.

There’s a very interesting book by Brad Lancaster titled, “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” that’s got all kinds of very practical and well-explained ideas on how to use the water that we get for free (rain) more efficiently.

It was impossible for me to grasp how precious water is while living in the US. Granted, I grew up in Oregon, where we’re often more concerned about flooding than droughts. But the amount of water available for free or a at a very low cost in the US is amazing. And not only is it available for very cheap, it’s also all drinkable. That is amazing. We use water that we could be drinking to water our crops and flush our toilets with. And we waste untold amounts. I heard all this information while living in the States, but it never sunk in. Well, of course we always have water, why wouldn’t we? The water that comes out of the tap, well, yes, it’s drinkable. And why shouldn’t it be?

Water that is not clean enough for drinking can be used for pretty much every other necessary water use. Bathing, washing dishes, watering plants, washing cars, etc. Water that has already been used to flush the toilet is no longer usable for such things. Water that has a lot of fat or grease in it is also not useful. Water that has dish soap in it actually can be very helpful for soil. It helps the soil to absorb water more easily. Water with a small amount of dish soap sprayed on plants can help with pest problems.

Drinking water, and water in general, is a precious, precious resource that we don’t appreciate to its fullest.

On a completely different note, I have pink highlights in my hair. I, who have never dyed my hair, nor had any sort of interesting cut, have pink things in my hair. And a ratail kind of braid.

my pink hairs

It never fails…the things I should arrive at on time, I decide that I should integrate myself into the culture a bit more and arrive late….thus arriving after the event has passed. Or, the opposite happens and I feel that the event is probably something I should be on time for and, in fact, I arrive an hour before everyone else. Today I went to a roof raising party and when I arrived there was no one there other than the owner of the house, as they had already finished the roof raising and everyone else had gone home. She very kindly fed me part of the two goats they killed for the party. Apparently one goat feeds ten hungry men.

I watch movie trailers for entertainment here. Seeing as the movies from the black market are often scratched and there is often an “unknown error” that causes the movie to quit playing, my life is filled with half-seen movies and clips of the best parts of movies. I shouldn´t talk down about all black market movies…a good number do actually work properly. And I delight in the fact that I can buy five fairly new movies for ten dollars.

Mangos are coming into season, so mostly I eat mangos, cabbage, granola and, at the moment, all things soy. Why cabbage, you might ask…I have no idea. I crave cabbage with vinegar, salt and pepper. I´m going to teach a class this coming week on how to use soy beans so for the past week or so I´ve mostly made things that involve soy. Pudding, cake, stir fry, fritters, etc. It is an amazing bean. I´m not convinced we should promote here anymore, but I did last year, so now people want to know what to do with it.

People keep giving us cheese that they´ve made. We cannot keep up with the amounts we´re given. People are so incredibly generous. Someone gave me seeds the other day that someone had given her and she was so excited to give some to me. She also gave me a bunch of herbs and some radishes that she had just bought. The seeds are probably one of the weirdest things I´ve ever eaten. I find them somewhat addicting, though Merideth thinks they have no flavor.  If you eat a handful and wait a minute or so, you start to salivate profusely and then, if you drink water, the water tastes sugared. It´s bizarre. Before you eat the seeds, the water tastes normal, afterward, sugared. Weird. I have no clue what kind of seeds they are.  Additionally, I feel that I have eaten a good number of these seeds, yet the bowl is still apparently as full as it was when I first poured the seeds in.