Water woes

I cried this morning.

All because of water.

On Saturday, my helper Mary texted to ask if she could come get some water from our tank. The state civil servants have been on strike for a few weeks, so there hasn't been much water. (The water board is state-run.) I didn't get her text until later that day, by which time she had already come to collect water at our house. (Remember, David, Timothy, and I are housesitting for my parents until they return in two weeks, so we weren't at our house.)

Mary came to work this morning and told me that by the time she got to our house with her buckets, all the water in our tank was gone. Now, you have to realise we bought ourselves a big water tank back in October or so. It cost a lot of money to purchase and install, but it was worth it to us to have it full of water in the dry season. When David came home sometime in December and told me it was full of water, I was elated. Yay! It's a lot of water! So when Mary told me it was gone--not only the water in our big tank, but also the water in the smaller drums and containers we'd filled over several weeks--I was pretty darn upset. Yes, I cried. People had come and stolen all of our precious water we'd spent so much money to save!! I couldn't believe it. And this is supposed to be a Christian community. It was just more than I could bear.

I called David, who told me not to worry about it, but suggested I take our new padlock and lock the tap on the tank. I went immediately over to the house and did so. As I did, I noticed water coming out of a community tap near our house. Running water? Sure enough, when I turned the tap on our tank, water dribbled out. So what water is there at this moment is OURS. I don't want to sound selfish and cruel, but we've paid for our water storage, and no one is going to steal our water! Can you imagine having to lock up your water supply??

Anyway, these are our water woes. I just hope that when we pack back home in 10 days, we'll have some water in the tank, considering the rains probably won't be here for another three or four months!