Water restored

Well, good to their word, at about 8:30 last night the water did come back again. Lots of air in the pipes for a while as it clears from our long run of pipe, but the backlog of washing can now be cleared.

It's a great lesson in how much we take for granted in life today. If you've never been without water in your home, just try not using any for 24 hours. How many time do you need to wash your hands? What do you do if you can't flush the toilet? Do you need to wash some food before you can eat? How do you clean your teeth? We take tap water for granted all the time. If you have a power cut for a few hours or even a day, it's inconvenient, but not a big problem. Water is!!!

Try it and you will realise what it means to have a water supply to people in African villages for example. A quick search on the internet will reveal organisations that for a small donation will help provide people around the world with water supplies. Perhaps you will also feel inspired to do so?

Locally there are quite a few houses (and several being built) that have swimming pools. During the cut there was a moan that someone had only been able to partially fill their pool and that the supply pressure had been low before the cut. Not a thought of what their drain on the supply was doing to other peoples supply! Never mind that they should be having their water delivered by tanker (and having it removed the same way).

No water

On Sunday evening we had a phone call from a lady in our village (Riglia) to tell us she had just spoken to a workman from the Dhimos (equivalent to the local council) who had told her that they were going to work on the water tanks that supply our village. The water would be off from Monday until Wednesday, maybe Thursday.

We passed the message on to a couple of neighbours but as we have never had a problem with our water supply, didn’t think too much about it.

Water supply here is a big problem. There’s plenty of water in the mountains behind us and Kalogria beach which is next to Stoupa (a fairly well known tourist resort 3 km away from us) is famous for it’s fresh water springs. If you swim at Kalogria the water is always cold and if you get near one of the springs you freeze! The big problem is how to channel this water as a source for domestic use. At present there are several bore holes from which water is pumped for the domestic supply. Some are close to the coast, and when the water table gets a bit low the water starts to taste salty. There are proposals to tap into the springs but this would involve drilling down about 200 metres, a very expensive operation. I think the Dhimos is trying to get funding for this at present, but until then…

All of this means that from time to time everyone has a day or two where they loose their water supply. Some people we know have lost it for up to eight days at a time. Some villages, especially in the tourist season, seem to loose water for several hours every day. Houses in those areas have installed a reserve water tank. When the water supply fails they can switch to this for their supply, but it means they have to close and open a couple of valves and activate a pump. We’ve been VERY lucky so far. As we are about 20-30 metres lower than the main village we’re the last to be cut off. Over three years we’ve had low pressure but never lost water altogether. Consequently, we have never felt the need to install a reserve tank of our own.

So, on Monday we were stupidly blasé about the water, and failed to fill any bowls or buckets. We worked in the garden in the morning and early afternoon, planting a new orange tree and a lemon tree. The vegetable patch was watered and then as we were checking another watering system we have just set up we were ‘amazed’ to find we had no water. Now we were dirty, sweaty and had no way of washing. A phone call to our friends who live in another village solved the problem, a quick ride over and a welcome shower.

All the bottles we could find were also filled with water so we could at least wash at home when we needed to. Toilets are the biggest problem with the amount of water used every time you flush. At least we can remove the cistern cover and keep refilling them.

The estimate for completion of the work is today, Friday. Of course, rumours are now circulating that the work will continue through until Sunday.

Panorama 2007

Now our camera is back and working well (fingers crossed it doesn’t break for a third time) here our panoramic view again. It’s now a year since the original picture and hopefully you can see the new building that is happening around us.

The building of more houses is inevitable, no matter where you live in this area at the moment there always seems to be another house suddenly sprouting from the ground. There are new laws every year changing what can and can’t be built, fees and taxes are increased, prices of land and material costs soar, but still people can find the money.