The ‘Water Thieves’, an Invention to Supply Havana Homes
In homes where water has not come in for days, residents have started using plastic bags when they need to go to the bathroom.
By Juan Diego Rodríguez (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The trick is to insert a hose into the pipes that run through the streets and sidewalks in front of the houses. If the right place is found, in the artery through which the liquid runs, the water thief can begin the robbery. “When I hear the little noise the pumps make in the morning, I immediately know that the water has arrived. The problem is that it comes with so little force that it doesn’t manage to rise to the tanks or fill the cisterns,” says Dinorah, a resident of the Luyanó neighborhood in Diez de Octubre who spoke with 14ymedio.
On Rodríguez Street, near where the Havana woman lives, water comes infrequently and the residents have opted to “get those little gadgets” to make the most of the days when there is water. The problem says Dinorah, is that “the little water that comes in is no longer distributed equally, and while some manage to fill their reserves thanks to the turbine, others do not receive a drop,” she explains.
And to top it off, she adds, “in a country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, so whoever has a pump that pulls the most gets the most water,” she says.
Dinorah is aware that water thieves are not a modern method. “This has always been done, but now everyone steals water, even if others don’t get it,” she explains. Now, she continues, they even sell the pumps in SMSEs. “The other day my husband went to a private hardware store and there was a man at the counter asking if the turbine they were selling could be used as a water thief,” she recalls.
“People mistakenly believe that the water thief produces water. It has nothing to do with it. If there are a lot of people with these pumps in a position in front of your house, your cistern will not fill up. The result is a case of every man for himself,” she reflects.
The water shortage has caused the situation in some parts of the capital to become truly scatological. “I was lucky because I left the house for a few days and I still have water in the cistern, but at my sister’s house they abandoned the toilet bowl for a plastic basket,” says Clara, another resident of Diez de Octubre.
According to the neighbor, both her family in the municipality of Nuevo Vedado and those who live closer, in Luyanó, have begun to use the typical reserve of plastic bags in Cuban homes when “nature calls them.” “What else are they going to do, if they can’t flush the toilets? Well, they put the bag in a bucket, like a toilet, and then they tie it closed and throw it into the garbage dump,” she says with a certain modesty.
Clara invited her sister and nephews to bathe at her house and asked them to bring dirty clothes to wash. “The water they have has to be saved for cooking and drinking for now,” she says, “but when my reserve runs out, we will have to see where we can get water from,” she says.
Since the Havana resident read an article in Tribuna de La Habana that described how the supply to Luyanó and other neighborhoods in the municipality was interrupted, she decided to save every drop of water she could. Some neighbors, however, do not have cisterns or even large tanks that would allow them to store water for several days.
“Two blocks from here, some neighbors caused a scandal yesterday and the director of Aguas de La Habana came and brought a tanker truck. The neighbors carried a little water with their buckets, but everyone knows that this is temporary and that if the service is not restored, we will have a hard time,” Clara analyzes.
At the moment, the lack of hygiene is getting worse and the garbage dumps are getting bigger with the new invasion of “jabitas” [little bags] and their particular smell, while the people of Havana dig in the ditches and alleys looking for a pipe to connect to their thief, in a territory that looks more and more like a Western movie every day.
Translated from Spanish to English by Translating Cuba.