Water on the Floor

Friday, May 25, 2018

On this island, people talk about the lights "la luz"—that is, the electricity—the way we in the USA talk about the weather. The daily power outages are common to almost all mankind in the Dominican Republic, the only difference being if your power gets cut for 2 hours or 8 and during which part of the day, so it's an easy subject to talk about when making polite conversation.

I'm lucky because in our neighborhood we generally fall in the middle of the 2 to 8 hour duration. However, when the switch gets flipped varies every day, so it's hard to anticipate. You might set out to do laundry one morning, or think it's okay that your phone only has a 40% charge, and then find out 5 minutes later that you were terribly wrong.

Sometimes I picture the men in the power plant sipping strong, sweet coffee and laughing maniacally as they throw entire neighborhoods into darkness at whatever hour fancies them.

I digress. From an environmental standpoint, less electricity means less coal, and power cuts might be something my congress should consider.

Sometimes, though, the loss of light and all things related is atypical. Sometimes, it's not the fault of the men in the power plant, and it's not just 6 hours—it's days. Because the majority of my life I had the capability to live off the grid, compliments of a generator and the accompanying 1,000 gallon tank of diesel hidden in the woods, I don't have much experience coping with the effects of extended blackouts.

The absence of Wifi is annoying, sure, but not terrible. Not being able to turn on a fan to combat mosquitoes is a little worse, but still one can grin and bear it. Candlelight at night, I'm told, is romantic. And, since I buy fresh every day, there's usually not much food to lose in the fridge besides tomato paste or a jar of mayo.

What I find challenging is water.

Every morning I have to sneak through my downstairs neighbor's living quarters (she's a nurse who often works the night shift) to plug in the little engine that pumps cold water from the earth up to the roof. On the roof—my favorite part of the house apart from the veranda—sits a big, black tank. It takes about 45 minutes to fill. From the roof, water arrives in my kitchen sink and showers with a little help from gravity, pressure, and some sort of physics I don't understand.

Obviously, when there's no electricity, there is no way to pump water up to the roof. Which means when the black tank is empty, you have to start hauling buckets of water from the cistern up to the 2nd floor for washing and flushing and cooking and that is just really inconvenient from my entitled American perspective. I mean, my husband and the boys don't like it either, and they aren't American. Thus, we do what we can to conserve the water on the roof.

So this morning, when I woke up at 5:20 with my husband's alarm to face day 2—a full day—of no electricity, I admit I was feeling stressed. First, Friday is one of the days I don't have Victor by my side, like, at all. He's at work from 6 to noon, and then immediately has classes at the university until 9pm. Second, usually the boys don't come home from school until 12:30pm, but this was an exams week and they had today off. Our neighborhood is far from the neighborhood they grew up in—and thus their friends—as well as the basketball court and baseball field. And with no electricity, they can't use the PS3 that a baseball player gave us in exchange for a physical therapy session.

What's more, since vigorous cleaning happens on Saturday in my house, you could see all the band-aids and touch ups and just plain explosions of the past 6 days. We are not going to talk about the pile of laundry. I will, however, bemoan publicly the fact that every single dish and pot I own was waiting dirty in the sink and on the counters because when trying to conserve water it's most efficient to wait and wash them all at once.

Okay, so it's not like I had to give a presentation to the UN today. That is a large part of my consternation. For millions of women—around the globe, or the strong women I share this country with—this light-less lifestyle with a fight for water is a daily reality and they manage. But it does phase me, perhaps like delivering a presentation to high profile people would.

Speaking of those resilient Dominican women, 2 of them showed up at my gate at 9am. I hate to admit it, but when I realized there were people here, my heart jumped unpleasantly. Even though I love these 2 girls—my companions from the sports complex who I have been training—I did not feel like navigating Spanish with people outside my family, with people who speak fast no matter what. With the addition of this new mental challenge, on top of everything else, I wanted to run away. As I felt the adrenaline pour into my bloodstream, I internally screamed, "No!" because the truth is, I am almost desperate for female companionship—and like I said, I love these two athletes. It's just that conversing in Spanish is difficult for me, and it makes me want to chose solitude over camaraderie.

Anyway, I had no choice this morning.

I was cleaning chicken at the time when they arrived. I had set it aside, and for 20 minutes we conversed--stressfully, on my part--of wonderfully girly topics. When she saw me uncover the bowl of chicken again, since I really had to continue, one of the girls, Stefani, offered to start the seasoning. The other, Ana, who loathes cooking unlike Stefani and I, grabbed a broom and headed outside the kitchen. She returned 30 seconds later with a status report:

Half of my house was flooded.

"The boys."

To their credit, they were cleaning their rooms. They are pretty good about doing that occasionally, and without being asked. Also, I, too, have once or twice forgotten to turn off the water when filling a 5 gallon pail; so I understand how it can happen.

It's just this morning the significance was now all our water wasn't on the roof.

It was on the floor.

Ah, so this was why God had sent me two women this morning: I needed physical help. I needed double-x's in the house, even if my English-wired brain was going to send me into the fight or flight zone either way.

I needed other women to help me take control of my house, and do so in 4th or 5th gear, not slowly in 2nd. I needed someone with whom to laugh at it all.

So by 10:45am, all the floors were remarkably clean, the midday meal was on the stove, the boys were occupied cleaning, and I felt encouraged because I was reminded there are other women on the planet. Stefeni and Ana left, brushing kisses on my cheeks, as is custom. And I pulled a chair onto the balcony to write because, for a few minutes at least, everything was in a safe holding pattern.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Obviously, lacking electricity and internet, I couldn't post this when I wrote it. The same funky electric system zapped my computer too, so it only turns on when it wants. And it decided to go 2 weeks without turning on.

So here I am, 11 days later. I had pretty much concluded I would not be making this post public, but you know, it's a snapshot of, actually, what day-to-day life is on a default level—and thus perhaps valuable to the story. Morning to morning, afternoon to afternoon, evening to evening, life here on a basic level is so much more complicated and emergency-filled than life in the USA.

Yet in the middle of all the somethings, life has never felt more meaningful in thanks to the profound sort of love I share with Victor.

And, I'm not bored.

When I was in Italy, I spent a fair amount of time working in ministry with a guy named GT. I was the same age as his younger sister who lived back in SoCal, and he was the same age as my older brother who lived in another part of the world with palm trees, only a little more dangerous; thus, our dynamic was quickly intuitive, maybe filling a bit of a familial absence we both felt. Anyway, one afternoon we were in the kitchen on campus, talking. The room was warm from the cookies baking in the oven—a pleasant contrast to the days before when we'd gotten soaked distributing tracts in the cold, pouring rain that had been pounding Pordenone as of late.

In response to something I'd been saying, but still rather out of the blue, GT concluded, "Your greatest fear is boredom, isn't it?"

In a blink I new the answer was yes, but I paused anyway, a bit taken aback by the realization. GT continued, "You're on a precipice, Mattea. God's going to do something."

He walked out of the kitchen, footsteps crunching in the gravel courtyard.

That was 3.5 years ago, and here I am now, with plenty of God-given mountains to climb, mountains that keep me from boredom.