Wednesday, August 09, 2006

What do I expect, living in a desert?

We haven't had water in our taps for 24 hours now. The newly installed pump appears to make no difference.

Occasional water shortages I can deal with--we've made "Refilling water storage jugs" a daily job--as long as I know that's just the way it is in Khartoum. But this morning, after failing to get any water, I walked outside to discover our next-door neighbor washing his sidewalk with a hose and the people two doors down filling a bucket with a hose so they could wash a car! Truly indignant now, I called our realtor. She tried to console me by telling me that she, too, had lost water yesterday from noon until three. I finally made her understand that it wasn't any wimpy little three hour shortage we were dealing with, so she made some phone calls and eventually called back to tell me that there's apparently some repair work going on. I see no repairman in our yard or in the street, so I have my doubts. Aargh!

For a day and a half, nobody in Khartoum had any dial-up Internet service. At least that's back.

1 comment:

Nate said...

:-( Sorry about the water. We have decided to save a couple of extra gallons here for whenever you come back. While that doesn't quench the thirst, it does inspire a fond memory of long car trips to Junction when I was little and I wanted to get a drink, preferably of root beer, but even for any little drink. Annette and Joanne, while trying to distract me, would say, "Well, lets pretend to drink big glasses of cold ice water. What do you think the glass looks like?" and the like. I'm sure I wasn't too patient because those distractions seemed only to last for a moment, but the memory holds water.