Happiness in a Heavy Duty 100L Barrel

Yesterday I bought a 100L barrel to keep in my kitchen and filled it up while the water tap was working (which because I bought the barrel will never stop working again, a la Murphy’s Law). I had a broad smile on my face, as I dumped bucketfuls of water into the barrel, thinking of the times I had to lug water from the tap behind one of the teachers’ house, about 200 – 250 meters away, and if that was not working (which it was not over the past couple of weeks), I would have to walk over to the school kitchen area which is twice the distance and use their water (usually a kid would run over to me and grab my bucket before I could do it myself). It gets especially annoying when I needed like 30 liters to do the laundry, like on yesterday morning when I finally gave up and decided to quit putting off buying the barrel.

Over the last couple of months, I have become much more aware of how much water I am using on a daily basis – I know my bucket holds 10 liters, so does my bathing basin, and I am really keeping a tally on how many liters I am using. I know for sure that I am using much less water than back in the States, and I am curious about if this awareness will continue when I get back to the States where I do not need to think about where my next liter of water will come from, and where things are not measured by buckets or basins.

Not only that, I am suffering from slight OCD-ness in regards to having safe water to drink (to the delight of my mom and to the bemusement of the older PCVs). I boil water on a daily basis and keep at least three to four liters in my fridge just so I have something to drink – I think this stemmed from my experience on New Year’s Eve party when we had a lot of booze and soda, but no safe water to drink. Needless to say, that was a mistake that none of us are prepared or plan to repeat, and the concept of just using tap water and drinking from the tap seems so far removed from reality that I probably would have to go through a bit of culture shock to get used to the idea again.

All in all, who said that you could not find happiness in a big ugly black plastic barrel with “HEAVY DUTY 100 LITRES” spray-painted in white on the side?! Not me!