I think I went back in time...

For about the last month, the electric company has been changing all of the electricity posts and cables in my site. This means that the electricity gets shut off at about 8 o’clock in the morning (sometimes earlier) and doesn’t come back on again until abut 5 in the evening. It’s been quite frustrating only being able to use electricity at night. I have more than once forgotten to charge my cell phone and went on a low battery all day hoping no one would call me. When I was living with a family, the lack of electricity didn’t affect too much in terms of cooking because we were cooking with fire. Now that I’m by myself, I cook with an electric stove/oven so when the electricity goes out, I can’t cook and I can’t heat up water to wash my dishes. While it is theoretically possible to wash dishes with cold water like every Paraguayan does, I prefer to use at least warm water to cut the grease to ensure that I have actual clean dishes and not halfway clean ones like most Paraguayans use. I also have to make sure that I keep my refrigerator closed as much as possible to keep as much cold air in there as possible.

To complete the problem, after a few hours without electricity, the community water tank goes out and everyone is without water as well. The plumber is out of town a lot, so we usually don’t get water again until nighttime as well when he gets back home and then drives out to the tank to fix it. A few times he was gone for 2 or 3 days and the entire community went without running water the whole time. In the last 5 years that most of my community has had running water, most people have neglected or gotten rid of the wells that they do have so access to water is difficult. The people who do not have wells have to walk to a neighbors house or down the street to fill up buckets to do their laundry, wash their dishes, cook, drink terere, and bathe. And if they have livestock, they have to lug even more water to their house to care for their animals. I am one of those people who’s well is too dirty to use. I also have no good way to transport water since I am still trying to get settled in my house and only have 2 palinganas which are not suitable to transport water, and one small bucket that I use for my latrine.
I knew water and electricity were precious resources, but I never realized how precious they really are until I had to go without. After I eat breakfast and wash those dishes, I fill up my palinganas with water so that if the water does go out, I at least have something to bathe in or wash dishes in and my dog has access to water as well. If I don’t do that, I have to wait all day, sometimes until 8 o’clock at night, maybe even the following morning to be able to wash my dishes or bathe. I also keep pitchers and bottles of water in the fridge to ensure I have water to stay hydrated or cook if/when the electricity comes back on. Sometimes I feel like I've gone back in time.

It’s rather difficult to make sure you use all the needed electricity/water you need for the day in the morning, especially when everything shuts off unexpectedly before 7:30 am like it did this morning, which by the way, is a Sunday. My old host family had asked me to bake a cake and bring it over for lunch. I wasn’t expecting the electricity to go out on a Sunday, and even if it did, I wasn’t expecting it to go off that early. I had my cake all ready to go and the moment I plugged in my oven, everything shut down. I have no idea if/when it will come back on today and have no way of finding out. I also had a pile of dishes loaded with grease from getting the cake ready and had really been hoping to heat up water to get them all clean. I figured I would just get them all clean with cold water as best I could so I didn’t have a pile of dirty dishes. I loaded my palingana with soap and turned on the water. After about a minute of water dribbling out of the spout, the water just stopped all together. I had also really been hoping to wash my hair this morning since I’ve been saying that for the last few days but have not had enough water to actually do that. I’m not really sure what to do with this predicament. I have cake batter ready to be put in the oven, a pile of dirty dishes, a cup and a half of really soapy water with no water to rinse, and dirty hair. I feel like things like this happen all the time in Paraguay and while it used to surprise and frustrate me, it doesn’t really phase me anymore. I’ll get to the dirty dishes and dirty hair when I get to them and have water. Maybe I’ll go find someone with a gas oven to bake my cake, or maybe the electricity will come back on. Thank goodness Paraguay doesn’t function on deadlines and promises and thank goodness my hair looks good dirty.