It’s raining outside. I mean pouring. I’m talking cats and dogs. It has been raining like this every afternoon for weeks. Here comes the funny part. We don’t have any water. That’s right. Our yard is flooded. Our dirt road is washed out… yet there is no water in the pipes. The good news is that They turn the water on again around midnight so that our water tank fills up enough to at least let us flush the toilet the next day.

Some of you may remember my first post. Water supply is a major problem here. It was in New Mexico too. I remember when the town would shut down car washes and put restrictions on when we could water our lawns. If you put those same restrictions in the Mexican context, they just don’t make much sense.

First of all, there’s the famous mordida, the payoff, the bribe. The most likely result of putting restrictions like these in place would be police officers with fatter wallets and car washes that keep on washing. I can’t blame the cops, though., They make about US$ 300 per month.

It’s common for Xalapeños to have aljibes, or large cisterns to accumulate water for situations such as this. Take our neighbors for example. When the rest of the community hasn’t showered in days, they generously water their lawn behind their large, cement barricade. Controlling when people water their lawns or who washes their cars would be an impossible task.

So that leaves us with education, a very powerful tool if taken seriously. Teaching the younger generations the importance of water and helping them to see the reality of the situation may be our only hope.

Helen Hyde
Mount Orizaba, 1912, Color woodcut.