Yesterday brought to a head and issue that has become almost serious in our village. This year the village is very busy, due to the monastery putting into high gear the promotion of itself. Yesterday hundreds of people came up our hill to see the monastery and it was hot, dry and people need water. The monastery is negligent about this situation and not taking care of water for the many people coming up the hill…
Now we have barely enough water for the villagers, because the villagers are mainly from the city and they like many city dwellers, have water to waste. Thus, while they may think they conserve, when they fill inflatable swimming pools with our drinking water, then we have issues. Now it is not just city people causing issues. We have several full time village dwellers that are use to having access to the water wells and no one else around…
There is one lady in particular, that lives here full time and as soon as the well was filled the day before yesterday and then yesterday she put a hose in the well at 6 a.m. and pumped it dry to the bottom, right into her garden, storage tanks and other containers. She took every last drop that she could get and left nothing for the largest section of the village…
This left everyone coming down the hill to our well and taking all of our water. Then we had hundreds of people who needed water as they walked all over the village and stared at the monastery and there was many children and elderly. I ended up putting a bucket near our well and allowing people to use it to bring up water to drink. This morning we have no water!
The rest of the village city dwellers, emptied the well yesterday afternoon. I watched one fill up a huge inflatable pool. Three kids had a blast and I can appreciate such fun, but they used our only drinking water and our system is budgeted. The electricity and water usage is under control of the local governmental services in a big village. There is very little money for water service, because no one pays their bill or cares to pay a bill for water. They do not live here in the tiny village and don’t care…
The monastery stole their water tower and buried their own well years ago when I first came here and now they are also taking all of our water… 😐
The pump has to be conserved, for it pumps from around a 1000 meters deep and when it goes out, it can take months to get a new pump installed. The money is not available for such niceties and luxuries. These are things that city people all my life have abused in small towns…
I watched all this yesterday while I worked in the yard. People came and went and they all needed water, for it seems no one brought water or even food. I was thinking that maybe we need a kiosk of drinks and quick food. The spot we are located in is perfect for such a item and there are days it would sell like crazy…
Therefore, we have a reviving monastery that is taking all of our drinking water, we have city people using our water for the kids swimming pools, we have several grouchy full time villagers hoarding the water and then about twenty of us who seem to be unable to get water to even drink half the time…
Bathing is no problem and swimming is no problem, we have twenty lakes and a beautiful river for swimming and bathing issues. The Fish Village even has a nice swimming beach for everyone to use. But hey, the river is right down the hill…
I have learned, I keep one huge bucket in a shaded space, one small bucket in the house covered for drinking, one large bucket in the sun for washing up and two medium buckets as backup, in case a hundred people get straws and suck our well dry… 🙂
Oh, we call a well колодец (kolodets) and right now our kolodets is empty and a bunch of it is in a three ring inflatable swimming pool right down the hill with a group of who I call “weekend warriors,” who will be gone by tomorrow to go home to Moscow and party for the real weekend. They spend half a day hauling water by hand, so that their child can play in the water, as they stare at a wonderful lake a hundred meters away…
Posted by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…