My crisis of the past two weeks has been water. The municipality here has changed over to a new water system; larger water mains were laid prior to my arrival on Utila. I overheard Wednesday September 1 that the deadline for connecting to the new system was Sunday, September 5. That night I asked the circuit steward if the mission house was on the new system. She realized then that it was not. She was getting ready to leave for LaCeiba on church business the next morning so she asked another member to have the fellow who was switching her over do the Mission House too. It didn't happen. After the 5th the city began to stop supplying water to the old lines. Wednesday the 7th I ran a hose from the store next door to my barrels. I could tell immediately that this method of filling the barrels was going to take forever and a day. Plus, the people who use the store's water kept turning off my hose or disconnecting it!
Takin' it to the Street
On my waterless Monday some visiting Florida Methodists invited me to their room at a nearby dive lodge to take a shower. The next day I walked my dirty dishes down the road until I found a member at home (on the third stop) and washed them there. I got a number of odd looks on the way there and back. (I was rather hoping that this might have the effect of shaming the church into action. It didn't seem to make any difference.) I willingly undergo the same inconveniences that my members undergo but I know of no church member who was not connected to the new system; that made it all the more frustrating.
Finally, Water!
A couple of church members recommended islander Ralph Zalayas to do the work. He showed up on Saturday to check out the job. Ralph would have started it right then except he didn't have supplies and every hardware store owner on the island is Seventh-Day Adventist, so their stores are all closed! Ralph came back early Monday morning with a helper and had the job done by mid-afternoon, except for the hookup at the street which he did early Tuesday morning when the city water was off.
The actual installation seems not to have been a terribly big deal, so why did it take two weeks? Of course the circuit steward should have thought to have had the mission house hooked up when her own house got connected. (She lives next door.) When that didn't happen she should have jumped on it right away to get it hooked up. But this is Utila...
Pictures of how the water gets to the house
|
The new 1" pipe (above) is connected to the new water main. (The lower pipe runs from a well to Henderson's Store next door; we borrowed the trench it lies in.) |
| Under the road, then up and through the wall at the bottom of the Mission
House fence.
|
 |
 |
And finally up and into one of my two water barrels. (There's normally a lid on this barrel, by the way.) This barrel is connected at its bottom to the blue barrel in the pump shed right next to it. |
| Two pipes enter the blue barrel at the top. The one on the left is the pump intake. (The pump moves water from the barrels up into the larger cistern that provides the house water pressure.) The pipe with the toilet tank float is the old water line. This ingenious setup kept the barrels full without me having to run out and open and close valves. I'd like to do something similar with the new water supply. Perhaps a team with plumbing expertise could help me with this? |  |
