28 October 2010

Daily Morning Bath… All with a Bottle of Water

Camping builds character. It teaches you how to solve problems that wouldn’t normally arrive in a typical civilian life. It teaches you to be grateful for what you have at home while in the same breath being grateful for the simple things in life – like water.

            Running water is one of those things we just take for granted, so when we go camping it’s, understandably, a wakeup call when we don’t have our typical method of extracting water. Potable water doesn’t typically appear at your beckoning call in the bush and the water that you do find isn’t typically a comfortable 80 degrees spewing out of six-foot high spout. For many, this is reason enough to avoid camping. For me I’m long past the addiction stage of camping so water or no water, I’m still going to go. Running water is nice when your camping, but I can do without if the situation demands.

A year ago I spent two weeks in the hot, dry, Arizona desert backpacking with several youth through the Anasazi Foundation. Despite being in the desert each day we encountered running water, but there was rarely enough to bathe in. Consequently, I learned the skill of taking a “canteen bath”. Taking a canteen bath is simple. All you do is fill up your canteen pour water over yourself and then wash with soap. It’s not near as soothing as a shower, but the beautiful scenery makes up for that.  Plus you know that in a few days you’ll be able to return to your running water at home… that is, provided you live in a place that has running water at home.

            Believe it or not, a significant number of people in Moldova actually live day to day without running water. They live in the tiny villages that populate the most densely populated and most agricultural country in the former USSR. Last summer, while kayaking along the Dniester River I happened upon several of these villages. Each of these villages had a spring in the center of the village with water running out of a pipe. One day on our trip I noticed a blonde-haired, eight-year-old girl filling up a large pail of water from a village spring. “Why are you filling that big bucket of water up”? I brazenly asked her. She candidly responded to what probably seemed like a really stupid question, “It’s my chore every day. I get the water to use at home”. I was dumfounded. “You mean people in Europe actually live day to day without running water!” I thought. And sure enough, tens of thousands of Europeans live without running water each day. In fact nearly every household in Thailand has running water and yet thousands of Moldovans are left without running water each year.

            My khozaika, a Moldovan lady in her 50s, tells me that in Varnița, the little border town where I’m living, they didn’t have running water until 1973! So she, like this little girl, spent her childhood making daily trips down to the local spring to get their water. At least there’s running water in this village now…well...

            I was living with my khozaika in a one-bedroom apartment. The apartment was comfortable and had all the necessary amenities minus a washing machine. It had its oddities as well, like the bed in my room that I’m not allowed to touch because its just for decoration. Even stranger were the dozens of 2-liter bottles of water congregating in the corners and aligning the walls in the bathroom and kitchen. Plus there was this large two-foot diameter wash basin filled with water in the bathroom. I was new though, and seeing that I was knackered from my lack of sleep, I paid little heed to these abnormalities.

It was my first full day in Varnița. I began the day by enjoying a hot morning shower/bath, bought some groceries, and came back home to cook my fresh catch of Russian pelmeni**. After boiling some tap waterr I sat down to eat my dinner while my khozaika and I chatted. She mentioned something about the water, but I didn’t catch what she said and kept talking to her about my planned work in Transnistria. After I finished my meal I went to the sink to clean my dish flipping the faucet handle up. “Hmm” I thought “That’s strange no water’s coming out”. My khozaika was standing at the entrance of the kitchen.

“Hey what’s up with the water”? I asked her, turning around.

“Oh, there’s no water” She casually responded, not the least bit distressed.

“What do you mean there’s no water!” I exclaimed in exasperation.

“Something’s up with the pipes. They turned the water off. Don’t worry this happens all the time”

“There…there, can’t be no water!” I thought to myself. “What am I going to do with no running water!” I quickly plucked my khozaika’s brain of all the information she knew. “When will it go back on?” “How will we use the toilet?” “When you say ‘often’ do you mean every week?” She casually answered each of my questions clearly not distraught in any way about our predicament. “That’s why I keep all this water in these bottles” she responded while showing me how to pour water down the toilet to flush it. “Once the water went out for two weeks last year” she continued. “That was really tough. It’s always inconvenient when the water goes out”. “Two weeks!” I thought. “I can’t live without water for two weeks.”

Now I brag about how I’m able to live without running water while I’m camping, but being cooped up in a tiny apartment 50 feet above sold ground is a different animal. See, when you’re in the bush you can easily go to the creek grab some water and use it to meet your needs. Even more importantly, you can freely go to the bathroom wherever and don’t have to worry about a toilet being able to flush. However, in an apartment those things don’t come that easily if everything’s not working correctly – and that was the impasse I had arrived at. The only place to go to the bathroom was the toilet, but once the water reserve in the toilet ran out you could not longer flush it and I wasn’t about to take the risk of taking the toilet apart to add more water. Bathing wasn’t as much of a worry of mine since I was already acquainted with bathing with just a small basin of water from my time in Moscow. But the toilet, there was no way we could live with a toilet that didn’t flush.

I prayed that the water would miraculously turn on the next day and woke up hopefully. I quickly ran to the bathroom and lifted up the lever for the tap – nothing. “Here we go”, I thought “Time for a canteen bath!” “Hmm, should I use my khozaika’s water? I’m not sure how long this drought’s going to last”. I decided against that and hopped over to the store across the street.

I grabbed two large, five-gallon jugs of water and brought them to the counter. The store clerk walked over to me, her bushy, red hair in a ponytail exposing her freckled, friendly face. Her white and gold teeth jumped out from hiding as she curved her lips to a smile.

“Buna Ziua!” she said, greeting me in Moldovan.

 “How much is this water?” I responded in my best Russian.

 “Treizeci si trei lei”. My puzzled look gave my total lack of Romanian skills away.

“Thirty three lei” she said again, this time switching to Russian.

I smiled and handed her money while practicing the Romanian she had just taught me.

“Today you’re learning Moldovan. You come here every morning we’ll teach you Moldovan! And I’ll teach you Tatar!”

I was too grumpy to enthusiastically respond and went on my way with two heavy water bottles in hand. I soon arrived back at my apartment, boiled a small amount of water and then mixed it with some cooler water. I then poured my precious water into a basin. “Here we go!”

I started with my head, dumping it into the 18’’ wide basin. I lathered my hair with shampoo, washed it out and then started with the rest of my body, desperately trying to conserve as much of my few gallons of water as possible. After pasting myself with a bar of soap I quickly splashed enough water on myself. Soon the water was too soapy and opaque to clean anything more and all I had left was cold water from my bottles. Luckily I only had a few more spots to clean and after rinsing my hair under the cold water one last time, I was done. “Ahh that wasn’t so bad!” I congratulated myself.            Thankfully that night the water came back on. “I can live through this” I told myself. “That water incident wasn’t bad at all”.

      Two days later the water went off again and this time it didn’t come back on so quickly. By this time I was already used to the water petering out so I casually repeated the bathing procedure from a few days before. This time I wasn’t going to go buy more water because we had plenty in storage.

Two days passed and my khozaika and I survived rather comfortably on our water storage. We bathed, boiled, cleaned dishes, and flushed the toilet with our bottles of water. Sure, it was an inconvenience but we were passing the test with flying colors. And, plus, the water was sure to come on soon… right?

I woke up the third day desperately hopeful that I would hear the trickling sound of running water in the bathroom and that water would come gushing out as I turned on the tap. Unfortunately these remained vain hopes and our well of flowing water was still dry. By now, it was starting to get to me. The toilet had stopped flushing and even when I would pour two liters of water down it still wouldn’t wash everything away. I tried to hold my bowels as much as I could and not drink too much water. I felt guilty using our toilet that had now become a sealed port-o-john frozen from the continual renewal and cleansing of running H2O. But you can only hold it for so long.

The absence of running water created a deathly staleness that penetrated every corner of the house. You couldn’t avoid it. The knowledge that the toilet hadn’t been flushed in 2 ½ days taunted me. No matter what I distracted myself with the anxiety of being stuck without water dangled over head. Knowing I would have to continue bathing with a bottle of water chilled me to the bones. The increasingly desperate situation dominated my thoughts.

“When’s the water going to come on again? Perhaps it won’t come on for two more weeks. After all nobody cares about whether a handful of villagers have running water or not!” My fears were building up and I was starting to panic. “I refuse to live in a place where I can’t flush the toilet” I stammered to myself.

I grudgingly got ready to take my “bath” and walked into the kitchen to boil some water. Where once three-liter bottles filled to their brims with water lined the kitchen walls now their empty shells were all that remained. We were running out of water fast, real fast. I grabbed one of the remaining bottles from under the table and heated some water on the stove. I then carried the water over to the bathroom, dumped it in a wash basin, and began the ordeal of washing myself.

I washed my body first and then started with my hair. My water was too saturated with soap to be of any further use and I was forced to dump it out. “Well, so much for my hot water” I reached for one of the numerous two-liter bottles at the base of the tub. It was empty. I grabbed another one; it, too, was empty. “Oh, there better still be some full water bottles” I muttered as my vexation surged. Reaching further along the tub I finally found a full bottle. “Man, I sure hope the water comes back on soon or we’re going to be in big trouble.” I dumped the water into the basin at the base of my knees, shampooed my hair, and then dunked my head into the basin. The water quickly dissipated and again I was left without any water. The back of my head was still covered in thick shampoo.

“This isn’t working, I’m going to use the sink”. I stood up, carefully hurdled the bath tub edge and grabbed another bottle in order to rinse my hair in the sink. I opened the bottle and poured it over my head and began lathering and rinsing. “That’s odd” I thought as I felt the thick layer of shampoo on the back of my head, “I must have put more shampoo on than I thought”. I poured even more of the bottle over my head and continued rinsing. “Man, I really did put a ton of shampoo in my hair! Here I keep pouring this water in my hair and the shampoo just seems to be just as thick as it was before… or even thicker”. I froze. My eyes trickled down to my hands below me. Thick, opaque white fluid oozed down my forearm. I frantically looked at the bottle I had been pouring on my head horrifically discovering it wasn’t water that was inside. To my dismay I had been pouring liquid, washing-machine soap over my head. Thick, white fluid crawled down the back of my neck. I frantically found another bottle of water (this time checking more closely) and managed to finally cleanse my frazzled hair from the viscous fluid that had just been clinging to my skull. Soon the ordeal was over and, thankfully, I was finally clean.

For most of us it’s easy to take for granted the simple conveniences that are at our daily disposal. We don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Man, is the water going to be on this morning?” or “Where am I going to get some food?” Life is hard in different ways, of course, for us Westerners but for the most part we have enough to meet our basic needs and wants.

I had never understood why so many ex-pat Russians, whom I had met in the States, had no desire to go back to Russia. “Surely don’t you want to go back and improve your country” I would ask. “What, you just want to come out here and give in to the comfortable life?” I would silently ask them. I used to judge and silently disdain these people.

Having no water for three days changed my vision drastically. For the first time in my life I experienced what it was truly like to be strapped to a poverty-stricken situation. Sure, I had lived in Russia before but nearly all of that time was in nice, middle class apartments and the water certainly never shut off for days. Bathing with a bottle of water and enduring an unflushable toilet for a few days taught me a lot.

I still don’t necessarily agree with people who leave their country for good for the sake of more comfortable life. But I don’t judge them; and I feel that I understand now why they leave. Here I’ll be in Moldova, likely telling many at-risk young men and women not to leave the country due to the risks of being trafficked into slavery. I imagined before that I would tell them, “Oh, just stay here, tough it out in Moldova. Don’t take the risk to go abroad”. And of course I hope they won’t place themselves in risky situations, but who am I to tell them, “Oh, everything will be okay, it’s not as bad here as you think”. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a tiny village with no running water. I don’t know what it’s like to be the oldest child of a family of six children and be responsible for harvesting the family’s livelihood while my father is too drunk to care for my family. I don’t know what it’s like to be an 18-year-old girl, dreaming of fleeing the incest she’s experienced at the hands of her father for years. Too often I feel that people come here from rich countries and preach to the poor “Oh, everything will be okay, just take part in our program and things will be fine.”  It’s not that simple. The vast majority of us from these wealthy countries don’t know what it’s like to live in such dogged poverty or even abuse that so many experience in Moldova. We study, we read, we listen, we see, but we don’t know. Only God and these Moldovans themselves know.

To my relief, upon returning to the home later that evening I found that the water was again flowing. My trial was over. Yet the lesson I learned will stay with me forever. Thanks to this experience I understand a fraction more than I did earlier about what it’s like to live in poverty here, and I appreciate and revere these people here all the more for humbly, and patiently surviving in this life here.

**Pelmeni (пельмени) (pron. Peel'-MYEN-iyy) – A Russian dish consisting of a pasta dough filled with meat.

* Khozaika (хозайка) (pron. Ho-ZAI-ka) – A woman who rents a room or apartment out to someone. Basically this is the equivalent to a landlord, but often people in Russian and Moldova rent just rooms so they live with their khozaikas.