A day without water

It all started the day before yesterday while preparing lunch. I was in the middle of rinsing a salad when the water started to drip rather than pour. Uh-oh. At the same time the laundry machine went on the blink flashing Error number 4. And I hadn’t even put the glaze on my cake for the Hang Out Café.

In my head I knew a no-water-day was coming on, yet how could it be? This was our new downtown apartment that was supposed to make life so much better than it had been at our Miramar house where we were used to taking cold, drippy showers because of the water problem there. Yet when the neighbors realized they had no water either, it sunk in. Oh well, I thought, that’s just what happens sometimes in a Mexican tourist town with abysmal infrastructure surrounded by ocean at the end of a peninsula. It really is like being on an island here sometimes.

But, man, when the water came back yesterday, it was as if the world had been placed properly on it’s axis once again. The first sign was the happy sound of the toilet filling with water. Then I heard my name being called. It was the landlady beaming, “Aimee, ya está el agua.” Then I stepped out onto our small patio with its lovely view of mango and mandarin trees, pushed the start-pause button on the washing machine and in minutes it was singing its song to say that another load of clean clothes was ready to be hung to dry.

That is only my small story of a single day without water, yet much of the world live with far greater water problems than we do in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. In many parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, people have to carry their water from miles away. In many Palestinian villages, they can no longer access water from their own wells because they have been outmaneuvered by the deeper wells of the Israelis. And in Bolivia, their water was actually sold out from under them to multinational corporations in what looks to be a frightening trend to privatize water. So as you are relishing a full force, hot shower or a refreshing glass of water straight from the tap, remember that water is amazing, precious, vital to our existence, and a human right that we are all entitled to.