Manzi (Water)

I live in a house with no running water. It took me two hours to realize the extra work living with no running water creates compared to living with it, but it took me over a month to get sore muscles from fetching it. For the first month, someone was living with us who did the whole job of fetching water from a pump a few hundred yards from our house and then filling the buckets that sit outside the toilet, bathing room, and those under the sink in the kitchen. After he moved out, the job was left to my host mom at first and then later my sister.

After watching my sister sweat it out over this work, I told her the next time she went to fetch water she needed to tell me. And so she did. And that is how I found myself on an empty stomach leaving a warm dinner on the table to go carry extremely heavy buckets of water that I had to stop to rest every hundred yards or so, in the dark at 8pm, and getting sweaty after I had just bathed.

There is a pump in a walled community of houses directly next to our house and also one across a field next to the school. We pay the homes to use their water. We fill the big buckets first, which need two people to carry them. After the smaller one have been filled, we begin to take the buckets and leave them right outside the front door. The process is slow. It takes time to fill each bucket and then time to move the buckets outside the house. And then more time to take the buckets into the house and to their respective places. Each bucket has its place, which I have had to learn. The time lends itself to socializing. The waterspouts are places people gather. We, or mostly my sister and cousin, chat with our neighbors and each other. My little brother usually comes, too. One memorable scene he burst into tears as we waited for our buckets to fill because my sister acted like she had found a cockroach and put it on his body. There was nothing in her hands, but he did not know that.

We’ve frequented the spout in the walled in community more because it is closer to our back door. You must move over a step, quite fun with a heavy water bucket in your hand, into the walled in community and then navigate your way in the dark between the wall and the house, trying not to step in the mud created by splashing water. My flip flops, or slippers as Zambians call them, has gotten stuck a few times in the muck. Then sometimes you have to dodge a clothesline full of drying clothes. Doors open at varying times as women in chitenges throw their dirty dishwater onto the mud or plants outside. Often they come and sit and wait with us.

Many times I’ve found myself wanting to find ways to streamline the process. My instinct is to grab the next bucket as soon as it is filled, and then even bring the bucket right into the house to its final resting place. I want to get it done as soon as possible. Especially when dinner is waiting for me. I’ve had to tell myself to hold my horses. Out of respect, I wait to see how they do things and try to do my part in the labor. It’s hard work after an already long day, but it’s better to do it at night than in the blistering Zambian sun. When my instinct to hurry bubbles up, I ask myself, what am I rushing for? Breathe. Fast or slow, the work will get done. As this chore becomes a routine as I do this every two or three days, my wish to hurry lessens. I’m just going to have to do this again, so why not take it easy and enjoy myself as much as I can.

Watching the buckets empty day by day has become a signal to prepare myself for the next round of fetching. I can’t help but be slightly disheartened. Didn’t we just do all this work? Now we have to do it again? The answer is yes. Yes, we do. We need water. And it is amazing to feel its weight literally in your arms and then hours afterward from soreness.

This morning I started singing one of my favorite Taize songs. The lyrics are:

Let all who are thirsty come; let all who wish receive, the water of life freely. Amen. Come Lord Jesus. Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

I was struck by the poignancy of these words here in Zambia. I’ve always loved how the lyrics offer lovely imagery of God’s love as water, something we can drink in, fill us, and sustain us. In the American Midwest, full of lakes great and small, full of homes with running water, water is a substance of abundance. In this context, the abundance of water seems to match the abundance of God’s love. But then there is Zambia, where water is not abundant. So does that mean God’s love is not abundant here? That certainly is not right. Hmm. Thinking of God’s love as water in Zambia might not be a metaphor for abundance. Instead water becomes this amazing, special gift that we seek, that we work for, that sustains us, that we need desperately. The rains become a blessing. A full bucket under the kitchen is a blessing. Water in my cup, a blessing. The Taize song still brings out imagery of the abundant and sustaining nature of God’s love, but in the Zambian context, I am reminded that God’s kingdom—driven by justice, love, compassion, kindness, and equality—has not yet come. There are places that struggle and must work for water. There are places that struggle and must work for justice, struggle and work for equality. People choose to drink exploitation and ignorance instead of love and kindness. May a new type of world come. Where the rains fall and fill everyone’s cup. Where justice falls down like a mighty stream.

Let all who are thirsty come to this world. May they be filled. May all who wish receive. May all who receive, share. The water of life. Freely. Amen.