Life's Necessities

For nearly a week, we didn’t have running water, because the water pipes in town are all being changed. Of course, there were no announcements made about this planned water outage. Thankfully our water reserve was nearly full, so we were able to more or less make do- until the stupid turkeys got up on the edge of the tank and pooped in it. There’s nothing like making coffee from turkey poop water.

During this week when I was taking sponge baths from a bucket, I couldn’t help but think how our daily living is quite paradoxical. We hand wash our clothes and then go play on our Macbook Pro. We often don’t have running water, but have high speed Internet in our house. We don’t have an oven or microwave, so we cook everything on a small gas stove, but we do have a Kitchen Aid blender and J.A. Henckels knife set (Gregg’s treasures from MO). We have to carry a milk pail to the dairy to get milk, but we can text message our families in Missouri from our cell phones. We buy all of our fruits and vegetables at the market on Sundays, haul them home and then watch cable TV.

I guess these are just some of the joys of being in the Peace Corps in the 21st Century.