Wow, Water is Great

Water is scarce in Jordan. In fact, I just read today that Jordan is the fourth most water poor country in the world. It's the complete opposite of where we come from in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where we can shower morning and night, wash the tiniest load of laundry whenever we want, leave the water running while we brush our teeth or shave, hold car-washing fundraisers and run through sprinklers all summer. There, the water flows, well, like water. Here in Amman, though, it does not; it flows like mud. As opposed to a constant supply of water that seemingly will never run dry, most people have a water tank on the roof of their building which holds their weekly supply of water. These tanks are filled once each week when the government turns on the tap, and when the tap is turned off, that is your water for the week. In our neighborhood, this happens on Wednesday.

So, on Wednesdays everyone does all their water intensive projects, while the water is coming in and filling their tank: laundry, all types of cleaning, gardening, maybe an extra long shower. We even flush our toilets more often. Because of this, water day is visibly different from all the other days of the week, with color coordinated laundry flying from all the area rooftops, and people outside hosing down their sidewalk and watering their gardens, all while a stream of water runs maddeningly down the sides of the buildings and down the street, a product of water pipes and tanks riddled with holes. Water day is also audibly different than any other day, with the day-long drain of water sloshing into the metal tanks, the rain-like splashing sound of all the first floor gardens being watered and just the general sound of everyone using water all around us. Below are some of the water tanks on the roof of our building:

Because water is so scarce here--and because we have to work with a weekly allotment of it--from Wednesday to Wednesday we must be careful to conserve. Also, I like to keep an eye on our levels, and every few days I trudge up to the roof to check the progress of our tanks. We've only actually run out of water a handful of times, like when we've had guests. We also have occasionally had problems with rocks in the pipes--thus preventing our water from coming in--and there have been a few times when various problems at the local water station have affected water delivery for the whole neighborhood.

This latter problem happened just recently. Usually on Wednesdays I also like to head up to the roof in the morning to see if the water is coming in, to make sure we can perform our weekly water tasks. This particular Wednesday, though, I did not; I got complacent. Instead, I sauntered up in the early evening after work to discover everyone's water day worst nightmare: a nearly empty tank and a tiny trickle of water dripping in. Our water day was over.

We stopped doing our laundry and just let our tanks fill up. By the time the tap was turned off a few hours later, we had about a third of a tank and the whole week in front of us. So, we spent that week with water conservation dominating our thoughts. We took fewer showers (I got one, maybe two). While showering, we soaped our bodies with the water turned off (just like with shaving, you don't really need the water on the whole time!). We flushed the toilets less. When we did use the faucets, we were aggressive about turning them off quickly. And--in a move that worked out well for me--towards the end of that week, we let the dishes go ("sorry, honey, we just don't have enough water").

In the end, we made it to the next Wednesday, with some sediment in the bottom of our tanks to spare. Below are two pictures of what we had left. As you will see, the water does really flow like mud.

Water is scarce in Jordan, and water was scarce in our house that week. Admittedly, having so little of it for that short time was a little stressful. As a result, when the water came rushing through early the next Wednesday morning as it normally does, relief came rushing through as well. Wow, water is great.