I can tell you upfront that the theme of this post is going to be water. Or rather, lack of it. I mentioned before that our water was cut off in the school. One of the former volunteers said it happened once last year for two or three days. It's been a week since we were cut off, that's a whole different kettle of fish and brings about a range of problems that we are solving both creatively and strategically.
Water Problem Number One: Drinking Water.
We have a filter up on the wall in the kitchen where we get our drinking water from. Only now there's no water going into the filter. Not such a big deal as there is bottled water available in the village, we can buy 20 liters for 75c and I'm pretty sure we are still being charged more than the normal villager. Such is the way here.
Water Problem Number 2: Personal Hygiene.
Gone are the days we wastefully took a shower each and every morning. 7 volunteers, 5 of them girls, that's a lot of water. But we've been creative and managed to clean ourselves in a number of different ways.
1 - baby wipes. OR as my mother likes to say, 'taking a whores bath'. I've no idea where she got that from.
2 - cleaning up at the neighbors with their stored rainwater, scooping water over ourselves from a bucket in an outhouse. One of the women was joking I owed her 25c for using the shower....we laughed.
3 - being an arrogant westerner and using bottled water for a bath. Even more arrogant is boiling the water for a warm bath. Bath in this case meaning laundry bowl.
4 - getting water from one random pipe in the village that still has some. This morning I went and filled 8 empty water bottles. I had no idea how to remove the pipe but a few of the village women pulled it apart and filled my bottles for me. I didn't let them, they forced me out of the way. My dad would be ashamed of me, him being a plumber and all. I then took a tiny bath in my favourite laundry bowl again.
4 - on my way back with my newly filled water bottles I met Cecile who was on her way out to take a shower in one of the Khmer teachers houses. She met his whole family pre-shower.
5 - we haven't yet, but I won't rule it out either, heading out to the small lake to wash up. The locals go out with some shampoo and a sarong and they just go for it.
6 - going to the city to shower. I'm ashamed to say it but I jumped at the chance to go to Phnom Penh last Saturday just because I knew I could take a shower with an actual shower. I was dirty by the time I got back to the village but it was glorious while it lasted.
7 - and then finally, embracing our natural odors and trying not to sweat too much which eventually brings us back to baby wipes at option number 1 above. Yum.
Water Problem Number 3: Toilet Flushing.
I won't go into too much details here. No water means no toilet flushing. And since we have to drag buckets of water from out in the village to the school we have made some strategic decisions regarding flushing. I'll leave it open to your imagination.
Water Problem Number 4: Cooking and Cleaning.
Basically the school is getting its day-to-day supply for cooking and cleaning from the random pipe in the village which the school caretaker gets every morning by filling up loads of buckets. We help him out when we can. It's possible we will have to do a good intestinal, parasite clean out in a couple of weeks but since all the water is boiled we don't see a problem with it. There has been a couple of instances however when the day-to-day day was mixed up with the drinking water. Put this with our toilet flushing problem above and we could be in for a seriously rough ride.
This is all well and good for us. This is a completely new experience and no matter how inconvenient it is we know it's temporary and we will all go home to our tiled bathrooms and over heated showers at some point in the future. For the villagers it's another story. The water has been cut because of construction out on the national road. No warning and no indication of when it comes back. Myself and Sophie were playing with some children the other evening when I spotted infected wounds on a little girls hands. Sophie being a nurse, she cleaned and dressed them. Turns out the little girl has scabies and an aggressive fungal infection. We spoke with her mother who said the whole family has the same problem. Sophie told them the best way to get rid of them is to get a lotion from the pharmacy, wash thoroughly every day and wash all bedding, towels, clothing, etc. Can you imagine what a task that is for a family of 9, never-mind not having a washing machine but not even having a reliable supply of water? It's ridiculous, they are almost doomed to suffer from treatable and unnecessary infections until the water comes back.
Non Water Related Items for this week:
- Pretty sure one of our preschoolers has a serious learning difficulty. it's a daily struggle to get him to concentrate and he can become distressed very easily.
- I've been showing our resident 2 year old Barney episodes on YouTube. Much to some resentment, he loves it.
- We got a tour of the local Buddhist temple by our student monks. Some important Cambodian government minister was there too. He wished us a happy new year.
- The schools wifi hates iPad minis. #westernproblems.
And that's it for this week. Only another two teaching weeks and my volunteering stint will be over. Time is flying much too quickly.
