H2O

Did you know that water only comes on every 13-18 days in my community? When the water turns on (for a few hours) we fill up what we can, hoping to store away as much as possible. What do we use to store water? Most families have a pila, a big open concrete trough. Some pilas are big, some are little, some leak. I have a good sized pila that is more than enough, since I am only one and my house doesn´t have a shower or a flushing toilet. My pila also gets filled up by a pipe that collects the rain from the roof, so I always have enough to share. Some families don´t have adequate water storage, so they improvise and use buckets, or used soda bottles, as pictured above. Think about this frequent occurrence in my neighborhood: a family of 6 has just finished up the water in their pila, so now they must empty these bottles as they wash clothes, bathe, wash dishes and clean. When this water is used up, they anxiously await the arrival of the water. The schedule is not fixed, so you could end up with a day or two of no water-no baths, no clean clothes, no washed dishes, no water to drink or use to cook with.