In Ukarumpa, each house has a tank to collect rainwater,
which is used to provide water for the house. Another source of water is the
nearby river, which is pumped to houses and largely used for laundry and
showering. (We filter our drinking water and use bleach in our dishwater.) A
few days ago, our neighbor children were playing in our yard while I was
talking to their mom. They ran over to tell me that there was a leak in our
rain tank, which I already knew, but their mom and I went over to look anyway.
As it turns out, another
leak had sprung in our tank, and now a thin stream of water spurted out
from the side. Our neighbors are Dutch, so we told the kids the story of the
young Dutch boy who held his finger in the hole in the dike to keep the water
back. I told that oldest he had to stay there all day with his finger over the
hole! That didn’t appeal to him, so I patched the hole with a thick piece of
grass, but the youngest girl pulled it back out—and immediately was struck in
the face by an even bigger spout of water!
The kids thought it was great fun to play in our rain tank
“sprinkler,” so we let them play until lunch time, and I patched it back up
again with another piece of grass. Later some local children who like to play
on the trampoline in our yard came up to the door to tell us the tank was
leaking again. The hole was bigger, so this time we patched it with sticks. The
tank is so old, though, the hole just kept getting bigger and bigger the more
we tried to fix it…so finally we stuffed a rag in it, and the owners of the
house ordered a new rain tank!
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