counting our blessings

last thursday evening something odd happened. as i turned the knob to the only faucet in our house (the one in the shower, mind you, because we have no sinks!) nothing happened. that’s right, the water was off. i know that in many villages here in belize, this may be a common occurrence, but it was the first time we had experienced it here since we arrived in october. that evening we consulted a neighbor, who assured us that it would probably be back in the morning.
well, friday came and went with no water. then saturday, sunday and most of monday. just as i was beginning to plot an overthrow of the village water board, the water returned. it came just as quietly as it had gone. my faith in its return had dwindled such that i hadn’t even turned the knob in over 24 hours. thankfully ms. villanueva sent her son to inform us of the long awaited return of the agua.
and just like that, things went back to normal. no more hauling water from neighbors’ wells and stockpiling it in laundry tubs. no more reusing hand-washing water to pour in the back of the toilet to flush it. no more gossiping with shop owners over why the water had truly been cut off. everyone seemingly went back to living as if nothing had ever happened.
of course, we’ll probably never know what the problem was or how it was solved. but we do know this:
late monday afternoon we talked with our peace corps program director to inform him of the situation. at this point, a village council representative had told coy there was no end in sight and the village had no way of procuring funds to pay the overdue electric bill (she said the water outage was a result of the electricity for the water pump being cut). we discussed the option of staying in orange walk town for a while and eventually our director said he would try to look into the situation through some other avenues. within 2 hours, the water was back. i texted him to jokingly ask who he had contacted, and how it was possible. he replied, “divine intervention.”
that same night, it began raining with a fervor. four days later, it still hasn’t stopped.