On an adventure called life

Our neighborhood recently had a problem with a water supply pipe where a steady stream of fresh water was making its way through the sidewalk pavement and into the street – not good! As luck would have it, this was right in front of my house, and I got to enjoy the day with my friends but without water. Here’s the timeline of events:

09:20 – Kyle comes home from the market to find Charly not showered, the dishes dirty, and the water off – great! Also, workers outside are telling my neighbor that they don’t know when the water will be back on.
09:30 – Kyle, Charly, Gaby, and Romeo head out to see if the soldes are worth buying anything. They aren’t.
11:20 – We all head home for lunch. Somehow the water is back on but the guys are still working outside. We take the opportunity to make lunch, eat, and get Gaby to the train station.
13:00 – Kyle, Charly, and Romeo work the afternoon away.
18:00 – Kyle and Charly come home to find the water back off and the workers having opened a BIG hole in the sidewalk. Their equipment is noisy, too – pumps, jackhammers, saws, and the like.
20:00 – With tons of dirty dishes everywhere and only a tea kettle full of water, Charly and Kyle make a low-water dinner of couscous, chicken, and zucchini.
22:00 – Kyle breaks down and heads to Romeo’s house to fill up 8 bottles of water he fished out of the recycling bin at home. Upon his return, however, Kyle finds the water back on and the men packing their equipment up.

This was certainly a big inconvenience for the day, especially a hot one during the summer where the flies started gathering on the dishes we couldn’t wash.

But more importantly, it made me think of the people outside of Europe and North America who don’t have the luxury of a faucet in their homes to drink, to wash with, and cook with. I can’t imagine it would be very fun to live without a clean source of water for very long!