running water...no es tan facil! (it's not that easy!)

I know some of you lay in bed at night wondering, "Hmm...how does running water work in Montellano, Dominican Republic?" Well never fear, tonight, I will attempt to answer that question.

Today, the gringas reached a new level...survived 34 hours of no running water. Sure, it might not sound all that bad, but trust me..it is. I never realize how much I appreciate water coming out of the faucet until I can't...shower, wash my hands, flush, wash dishes, do laundry, etc. All of a sudden life turns into bucket baths, lots of hand sanitizer, bucket flushes, and no dishes or laundry!

Running out of water is not that foreign. Our landlady brought us this awesome tank. We make sure it is filled whenever we do have water preparing for the inevitable- that at one point or another we will lose running water.

So let me try to explain what I think I understand about our water situation. (There might be a handyman out there reading this who can correct me but I think this is how it works). There is a cistern in the ground that gets filled up when the city sends water. Its great news when the cistern is full. Then, when we have electricity, the pump sends water up to our roof where we have 3 tinacos. They look something like this:

So as far as I understand, when I turn the faucet on, water is coming down through the pipes from this tinaco on top of my roof. Sounds simple enough, right?

We just run into a few problems, like today for example.

Finally after over 24 hours of nothing coming out of the faucet and our reserve tank getting really low from bucket baths, I asked my neighbor who lives downstairs if she knew anything about the water. She said she talked to a guy on the street who heard from someone that the city pipes were broken and were getting "fixed"...so maybe we would get water sent into our cistern whenever the electricity came back on (at this point it had been off for 5 hours or so and I had no idea when it would be back).

After some time, the neighbor and I decided it was time to take matters into our own hands. So, my neighbor called a water truck. This is just what it sounds like. A big truck with a huge water tank on the back. They come to your house and fill up your tinaco for $12. The first water truck that came didn't have a long enough hose. They got all these pipes of different sizes and tried to connect them to possibly reach to our cistern. That failed. The second water truck that showed up was charging too much money so we sent him on his way. Finally, the third truck pulled up. I was never so excited to see a big loud truck pull up in front of my apartment.

So once the truck arrived, the water experts stretched out the hose all the way to our cistern to start filling it up.

You can imagine my excitement at this point! One step closer to water!

This is the cistern- its in the apartment on the main level below me. Thankfully the hose reached all the way and we got it all filled up.

The only thing left to do was wait until the power came on so that the pump could get the water up to the tank and then out of my faucets....

And after a 34 hour ordeal, that's just what happened. My apartment had RUNNING WATER!!! :)