Guest Entry: Water Issues

The following is a guest entry by Michael Lewis:

So I just want to say a word or two about water issues. When I was in Quetzaltenango at the school, the water in our district was shut down twice for nearly a full day each. They said a pipe burst, and it took the whole day to fix it and get the water back on.

Sound like an isolated incident? Hardly. The second family I was staying with had buckets all over the house that were full of water “just in case”. When the water turns off we would use these buckets to flush the toilets.

In Paxtoca, I was warned on almost the first day that it was best to take showers in the morning, because the shower water frequently ran out in the evenings. If I wanted a shower in the evening I was told they would boil some water for me.

The way people wash dishes, and even their hands, is to fill a sink with water that just sits there full, and then they will pour water from that basin over a drain to rinse of their hands after having lathered up with soap. This is because you never know when the water will shut down, so you just keep the sink full at all times.

You’ll see water tanks on top of houses all over the place. In the States we might think these were hot water tanks, but here water for the shower is heated by an instant heater attached to the showerhead. They do the same thing in Bolivia, and I have felt an electric shock more than once on these things because my head was too close to the shower head. The water tanks on top of houses are just there to store water for when the water shuts down.

I get it, Guatemala is poor, but I can’t help but think that part of why they are so poor is because of the incompetence of the local governments. Right now is the rainy season. It literally rains every day, usually for 3-4 hours in the afternoon. Yet, despite the clear abundance of water, I’ve had the water shutdown while it was raining.

Felipe told me that one of the ideas of the Association is to set up a water collection system to catch the runoff from the greenhouses. Martín showed me some plans for an environmentally sustainable house he wants to build in Guatemala that is set up to collect rain water for home usage. Again, the contrast is amazing. California has government-mandated water restrictions because of a multi-year drought, yet we have fewer water problems there than they do in Guatemala. Of all of their problems, I feel like this is one Guatemala can fix. In the meantime, it makes me grateful that we have reliable water in the States.