Imposter!

I feel moved to write about my experiences of feeling like an imposter. People often ask me, after hearing that I majored in international relations, how it was that I got placed in the water and sanitation program in Honduras. Generally, my answer is because I did for Habitat for Humanity work one summer. Whether or not that is true, I don’t know, but it’s still my answer.

These past few weeks … yes weeks … I have slowly noticed that indoor plumbing in my how was becoming increasingly nonexistent. First to go was the shower, which is the highest connection in the house, next the kitchen and bathroom sink, and eventually the toilet. It’s amazing how comfortable I am with things going wrong and it’s starting to worry me. Slowly my indoor plumbing disappears and instead of asking questions and wondering why, I just assume that it’s because the general water system in Corquin is off and the water will eventually will come back. Now, that assessment wasn’t entirely off most likely, but wouldn’t you think that after a few weeks of this and less rain (generally the cause of major water system problems) that the water would have come back?
Anyways, as the connections in my house lost water I still got water in my pila (big concrete water holding thing), which really as long as I still had water I was ok. Well, except for washing dishes and hauling water to the bathroom got annoying, but I had this unfounded belief that the water was coming back any day!

Well, I get back from El Salvador and low and behold … not a drop of water! Not a single drop! Odd. I went to the owners’ house to show them how to use their new washing machine and decided to inquire about the potential causes of my now distressing water outage.

Well, fijenseque, the house always had water, but the neighbor had been complaining that she had a stream of water running through her yard and maybe she entered my yard and turned off the water to my house via the valve in my yard. Valve in the yard! Useful piece of information.

I did not operate the valve correctly and thereby to misjudged my problem for an extra day. I will forego the details, but in the end I decided that the municipality shut off my water. Clearly, I shouldn’t be an investigator.

1) Slow progression of loss of water in my house points to pressure problems.
2) No water in the pila points to pressure problems.
3) Gradual disappearance of water in my house would not suggest that the municipality cut off the water.
4) Water running through my neighbor’s yard would suggest a major leak.
In the end I figured it out, slowly but surely, and decided there was a broken tube. The next task was to set about finding someone who could fix everything for me. There’s a certain nervousness you get from hiring someone to fix something in your house from the phonebook or something. Will they do a good job? Are they reliable? Will they charge me a reasonable amount? Try doing that in a foreign country and in a different language.

I was racked with nervousness, which is kind of funny because I’ve most certainly endured worse. This whole time the people who own my house were of no help. They didn’t even bother to recommend someone. I asked around in my office and was given a phone number.

Now, I hate talking on the phone in Spanish because it’s that much harder to understand people. I would think that speaking to someone face-to-face would be more stressful, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I get up nerve to call this guy and walk outside my office (I never make phone calls inside lest they judge me) with my phone. I dial his number, press send and proceed to shove a whole cookie in my mouth. Like, what was I thinking? The guy answered and I’m like, “Mum bum gringa bum num agua.”

He was really nice and showed up later that day to see if he could diagnose the problem. As I’m writing this blog he’s outside (the next day) fixing everything. Basically, as he’s outside fixing the problem (leak and clogged tubes) I was reflecting on how funny it is for the wat/san Volunteer to hire someone to fix problems of which I am supposedly knowledgeable. I felt like an imposter. I could have done the job. I consoled myself by saying that I didn’t have the necessary tools, i.e. big metal bar and shovel, and that otherwise I might have undertaken the project myself.

On the brighter side, my standard of living has improved 100%! I washed dishes inside and my house no longer smells of sewage because A) I have the water to flush the toilet B) toilets seem more efficient at flushing themselves than buckets of water. Apart from the toilet, there’s the general cleanliness of the house, which seemed to suffer with the water problem.