It’s 12:43 on October 25th, 2021 and it’s been nearly three hours without access to clean water.
My sister just said “I’m going to take a shower”, I respond “there’s no water but check again”. She opens the water tap and says “Oh, this is so bad”
We’re both visiting our Mom in our home country: México. I live in Berlin and my sister lives in San Francisco. Both cities have access to clean drinkable water all day, every day.
My Mom lives in a small 25-house compound in the outskirts of CDMX located in the State of México. Since my childhood and decades before that there have been water issues in this city.
A neighbor who lives in a close compound also mentioned water accessibility problems in the area during the last few days, and as a consequence there is low water pressure or sometimes lack of access to water.
So, there are two issues happening right now while I type: 1. lack of access to clean water and 2. lack of electricity for the water pumps inside the compound, the latter is a consequence of corruption. Some unknown neighbor messed with the electricity meter of the water pumps and the electric company cut the electricity supply for the pumps. Shit.
In the last two years, I’ve been working on a side-project called Ueiya, some of the project’s objectives are to increase efficiency of water usage, raise awareness around water issues and help tackle water issues around the world such as droughts, water insecurity, availability, scarcity, rising sea levels, floods, water pollution, poor sanitation to name a few.
You can check out more about the project and help spread the word here www.ueiya.com, if you like 🙂
It seems water pressure is back, what a relief. I’ll take a shower.
An easy way to reduce water usage is by using a 15-20 Liter bucket in the shower. Place it while the water is heating up and place it beside you while you shower. Later, you can use that water for the toilet.
