Hard Corps: Hauling Water, Bucket Showers, and Hand-Washing Clothes

            Basically anywhere you go in the world water scarcity is a problem, though often an unnoticeable one.  But many places you go in the developing world water scarcity will be both present and obvious.  When the rains leave and the summer season comes to Nicaragua, the result is dried up riverbeds and empty wells with nothing but dusty brown fields for a backdrop.  This means frequent water shortages for much of the country.  Having known this before I came here, I was preparing myself to have to haul my own water, perhaps across great distances.  I saw myself with a thick tree branch resting lengthwise across my shoulders.  Sturdy hooks would be screwed in near the ends of the branch and heavy buckets filled with water would be dangling from either side, swinging as I walked.  Now I wasn’t preparing for this physically of course (I took advantage of having a faucet till the last moment), but I was trying to envision myself doing it.  I was trying to calculate just how far is too far when it comes to hauling water for a shower.  I think I decided on something like half a mile.  Then I decided that I would probably be willing to walk considerably farther for a Milky Way.

But as it so happened I didn’t have to find out because I live in a place that threatens to downpour on any day, at any moment, all year long.  The numbers I’ve seen say that we get anywhere from 2500mm – 5000mm of rain per year, which, given some weeks, sounds conservative.  The dry season really isn’t long enough to dry out the wells.  And even if it were, my town was built on the shore of the largest lake in Central America.  (Interesting side note: So big is Lake Nicaragua that at some point in the past sharks must have just thought it to be another ocean and swam on in, thus giving rise to the only lake in the world containing freshwater sharks – bull sharks!  Most of them, however, were killed in the 70’s by a shark fin processing plant.  The fins were exported to Japan and the carcasses were left to rot in the sun.)  The water isn’t really drinkable when taken directly from the lake, but thanks to creative solutions like water filters made out of porous clay, it could be easily decontaminated and made plenty safe to drink.  But generally, if you turn on the faucet between the hours of 4am and 9pm, you’ll probably get water, even if it does comes out a murky brown every once in awhile.  The pumps are turned off at night to conserve energy, and because they’re electric they stop when the power goes out; but as long as you keep a small reserve on hand you should never be in need.  Simply put, water isn’t a major concern of people in my town.

So I blew that one; I did all that worrying for nothing.  My house is also equipped with a flush toilet (where it flushes to I am still unsure) and an inch wide pipe sticking four inches out of the wall about six feet off the floor: a shower.  I only take bucket showers about once or twice a month when there’s no electricity.  So I was pretty much wrong there too.  But there was one chore that I was sure I couldn’t be wrong about: laundry.  I used to hate doing laundry; I would often wait until my only viable options were either wash my clothes or don’t leave home.  But worse than loading the washing machine is being the washing machine.  Hand-washing clothes invokes the help of certain muscles in my arms that I believe have been in a state of atrophy for a very long time.  And I’m just one person.  I couldn’t imagine doing it for a family of ten, as many women do.  It doesn’t seem possible; you’d have to cheat.  Although, if I ever do find myself in such a situation, I like to think that when it comes to hand-washing clothes I’m lightning quick, which is just a more encouraging way of saying that I do a pretty lousy job hand-washing clothes.  Nothing ever seems that clean and a lot of the effort feels wasted.  And to add insult to injury, you don’t have the luxury of having your clothes shrink back to their normal size in the dryer.  Everything just gets bigger, looser, and more flowing.  Couple that with the side effects of a particularly harsh bacterial infection and you look like a young child playing dress up in their parents’ clothes.

But I have learned to get the most out of the task.  I like to save it for a particularly hot day and treat my wash sink like a water park.  The concrete washboard is outside so I don’t have to worry about making a mess.  I can blast music as loud as I want and sing while I work.  And I really do enjoy seeing my clothes hanging from the lines, dripping water, and drying in the breeze and sun.  It’s infinitely better than going down to the dingy basement of an apartment building to check on the state of your clothes rolling around inside of some deafening machine.  Sure it takes a little longer, but because I despise folding clothes as much as washing them, the few extra hours I have to wait are more of a gift than a punishment.

**Sorry about the boring pics; I didn't have much to go on.  The top one was taken from my porch and looking up the street away from the lake.  There are no sewers here so most heavy rainfalls result in lots of rushing water.  The second pic is yet another shot of my backyard.

Hard Corps - An Introductory Note

The other day I got up at 4:30am, put on some beat-up jeans and a t-shirt, and met my neighbor outside my house.  We pulled on our rubber boots and hiked about four kilometers in complete darkness across a few farms and up to the top of a big hill that lies to the south of town.  We had no flashlight and with every step it was evident that some cow or another had just barely beaten us to that very spot.  All we carried with us was a sack of pinól, which is corn ground into a fine powder, a small container of sugar, and two plastic cups.  The reason for the trip?  Milk, of course!  Up on the hilltop is a small dairy farm, and milk, pinól, and sugar make a traditional Nicaraguan beverage (I’m not sure that sugar was part of the original recipe, but try telling that to anyone here).  And given that it’s a dairy farm we didn’t have to bother with cumbersome milk cartons or slow ourselves down with any lengthy pasteurization processes; we just went udder to cup to lips.  It was as warm as a cow udder (possible new expression?) and delicious.  And as an added bonus, as far as I am aware, it didn’t make me sick or give me any parasites, at least none that weren’t already living in me.  But when I got home a few hours later and played back the morning’s events in my mind, I couldn’t help but summarize it all like this: I got up at 4:30am and stumbled through the dark for four kilometers to have a glass of milk then basically turned around and came home.  The effort seemed…excessive.  But the funny thing is that that’s sort of what I had imagined part of my Peace Corps experience would be like.  It would be me going to great lengths to get the things that at one time were so accessible and easily obtained.  The basics would become luxuries well earned.

Whether or not you are, have been, or will be a Peace Corps volunteer, it’s likely that at some point you formed some sort of a preconceived notion of what life would be like living as one in a developing nation.  I know I did.  I spent a lot of time thinking about the lifestyle I would lead and the luxuries to which I wouldn’t have access; then I romanticized it.  I would live contentedly, maybe even nobly, without life’s little perks such as running water (which I have), a refrigerator (which I have), or a cell phone (which I have).  I would look a lot like this:

Or, if you prefer the close-up, like this:

Mustache density would be my defining characteristic, and that would get me places.  It would be a wonderful existence rooted in scarcity, isolation, and digestive issues.  And quite often it is.  But if you were to ask me if my perception of the Peace Corps lifestyle that I had formed three years ago match up to the reality of my life now, I would probably say…sort of.  And that’s pretty vague.  So in an attempt to make it less vague, I thought I would compare and contrast fantasy with reality.  Being something to which I have devoted considerable thought, I have a lot of examples.  But rather than making this the world’s longest blog entry that nobody’s going to read, I decided I’d chop it up into multiple entries that maybe somebody will read.

Now before I begin, it should be noted that this isn’t meant to portray the lifestyles of other volunteers; rather, it’s a portrayal of my own life.  Much of what I have or don’t have, or how I live, isn’t at all the same for other volunteers, even here within Nicaragua.  After all, I don’t even have to poop in a latrine regularly.  Now how many people here can say the same?

The Cow Chase

I go running at roughly the same time every day along the same exact route.  It’s a long and newly paved road out of town with very little traffic.  During my run I see maybe five vehicles.  It’s a pretty road; it winds through farmland and forest, it’s hilly, and it’s well shaded.  There are lots of different birds and way too many dead skunks.  Horses and cattle graze freely in the banks of tall grass between the barbed wire fences and the road.  White egrets, when not hitching rides on the backs of the animals, follow them around collecting the worms and bugs yanked up as the grass gets eaten.  I could run in town if I wanted to but it can be miserable at times since those that burn trash generally do so in the morning.  So this road out of town is my only real option, but not a bad one.

My punctuality means there are certain people that I pass by nearly every day.  My running may have been a bit of a novelty to them at one time, but that era is long gone.  Most of them I have come to know or at least recognize and we acknowledge each other with a little wave and an adiós, which means hey (don’t check your dictionary), and I continue on my way.

The amount of people out and about at such an early hour is astounding.  I swear there’s not a person in this town that ever sleeps past 6:30am.  Many of them have things to do but some of them certainly don’t.  Among those that do have things to do is a family of three men, owners of a small dairy farm, that I see everyday without fail.  They have two pieces of land just outside of town, one on the east side of the road and the other on the west.  They keep the calves and cows separate so that the calves don’t go and drink up all the milk before the people get to.  The animals don’t seem to appreciate being kept apart and protest in desperation.  They talk to each other from their pens across the road; the cows moo and the calves moo back pitifully.  Some of them figure out how to escape and wander where they will.  Those that make of a habit of it have giant sticks shaped like slingshots tied to their horns or necks.  It’s supposed to keep them from sneaking through the barbed wire by making it a trickier maneuver, but I see so many animals wandering in the middle of the street with sticks tied to their heads that I get the sense it’s not so effective.  But in the morning, at exactly the same time I go running by, the three men bring the calves and cows together to feed and to be milked.  One might assume they would bring the calves over to the cows’ side or the cows over to the calves’ side, but they actually bring them both to meet in the middle and work in the street or just off to the side of the road.  And that’s where I see them.

These men almost never say adiós to me, and with good reason.  That reason being that they probably don’t like me too much.  It turns out that cattle, somewhat skittish, become frightened when people come running towards them.  I always try to stay as far away as possible and take a path way off to the side to keep from spooking them, but inevitably a few scatter when they see me.  Some of them turn in circles, some of them sort of group together, and every so often some of them dash off in the same direction I’m running.  It’s the bolting of the livestock that causes the animosity.  I’m a disruption.  As I come running upon them I can see from a distance a very smoothly run and problem-free operation.  But as I close in and pass by, the three men, given no warning, look on helplessly as I chase a few of their cows away down the road.  The first few times I didn’t really do anything; I just kept on going behind their cows.  Eventually I felt compelled to help, mediocre as this assistance may be.  I would make noises to get their attention so they might come back.  One family that I know controls their cows by yelling rana! rana! rana! at them.  It means frog! frog! frog!  I felt funny saying it.  I tried it out but my doubt and awkwardness caused me to do so unconvincingly.   It didn’t do a thing.  I have a feeling it may not be a common practice and I got embarrassed when I thought about the men seeing me chase their cows away while meekly calling them frogs.  Finally I would try slowing down or stopping entirely but even when I stopped the cows kept going, so now I just don’t stop.

I know exactly where they’ll end up.  They make it to the stream not far off, about half a kilometer from where I started pursuing them.  They never cross the bridge; instead they head for the dead-end made by the meeting of the stream and the fence, get stuck, and just give up.  As I go on by their individual gazes follow me in unison, like they’re watching a slow-motion tennis match.  Since cows have no eyebrows and are therefore expressionless beings, I can’t be certain whether they’re running out of terror or joy.  I like to assume joy; and if not joy, exhilaration.  That way, when I’m out slowing milk production, at least I know the cows, along with myself, are having a good time.

(Thanks to Zac for the top photo, taken on Isla de Ometepe before the 18k)