Ha! Tricked you… if you thought this was going to be a cheeky post about my pigtails I am sorry.. well, not *that* sorry. Now you are here, you may as well read on, right?
My bathroom sink is blocked. The water stays in it for ages now. This morning I looked down at it and it appeared to be yellow. It wasnt, the yellow was from the amazing sunshine we had today, bursting in through the window and lighting up the whole room.
Yellow water took me instantly back to rural Spain where I lived for 5 years. We lived in a tiny hamlet that had electricity but no mains water. My Spanish neighbours, who grew fruit and vegetables had Riega water (agricultural water sent to order via big concrete pipes). We had ours via a truck. That sounds mad. It was mad.
I would phone Pepe in my broken Spanish, Pepe would promise to bring water. Pepe wouldn’t turn up. I would phone him again the next day, he would ignore the call or promise but again fail to deliver. After several days of this my neighbour would go to the village to find him in the bar, he would turn up three hours later with our water.
I didn’t have a pit for the water so he would put it into our pool… we would then clean the water (which was always yellow with a green tinge and contained various bugs and small frogs) and pump it up to our house as and when we needed it.. Every time we used the water, the pool water dipped. Once it had dipped by about a metre, it was no longer possible to keep it clean properly as the level fell below the filter height. The water would return to yellow, tinged with green and mosquitos would make it their home.
That is how we lived for 2 years. Clean water for a week then dirty, smelly water for three until we started to run out and had to try to track down Pepe again. One day Pepe bought a lovely new truck. It was too big to get around the corner before my house so he simply couldn’t deliver. Without water we could no longer live in our little Spanish hamlet, work dried up at the same rate as our remaining swimming pool water so we reluctantly packed up and returned to live in the UK.
I feel so blessed to live in a country where our tap water is clean and drinkable. Every time I have a shower I say thank you for being able to wash my hair and for it to smell of apples afterwards instead of pond.
- Splash ; )
Help others to have clean water by donating what you can and please don’t waste this gift we have been given.
(Remind me one day to tell you about the Riega water system and how I showed the old Spanish men that women aren’t *all that* incapable after all)
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