How Are We Supposed to Fill the Pool?

The taps were supposed to run dry at 9am this morning. That was the warning - not that I had noticed the double page spread taken out by the Nairobi Water Company. So we have filled every receptacle in the house. I figure 50 litres is more than enough to see us through the 48 hours rationing. Vic, who suffers water-panics if there isn’t water within five metres of her, isn’t so sure. The good people at the water company can’t tell me how long the rationing will last. My guess is a while.

For the time being water is still flowing from the taps, but perhaps we are just draining the tank.

We are told the dams are running dry. Ominously, we are supposedly in the middle of the long rains. But they have failed to materialise. Indeed right now the sun is blazing its way through my window and my study feels more like a greenhouse. There is not a black cloud in sight and we have a long wait until the next rains are due in November. It doesn’t take a hydro-engineer to work out that the rationing will have to increase in the coming months if the rains do indeed fail.

No doubt the water bill will continue to rise even though our water consumption falls. The same happened when I lived in Kampala. Again the trigger was erratic rain patterns and low water levels in Lake Victoria, the source of Uganda’s hydro-electric power. The load-shedding got so bad the power grid was turned off every other day, industry was crippled and we lived by candlelight. But that didn’t stop our bills nearly doubling. If anyone can explain which law of economics this follows I would be very grateful.

So I guess we’ll blame this latest inconvenience – how after all are we going to keep the compound’s swimming pool topped up? – on global warming and Kenya’s insatiable demand for firewood.

I remember talking to an Kikuyu lady, Elizabeth Kinyanjui, around this time last year. Her hands were calloused from a  lifetime's  farming  in the tea-plantation clad hills of Limuru just outside Nairobi. Once upon a time she could mark the days she would plant her crops in the calendar. That is how reliable the rains were. Now she has no idea when is best. Back then apparently the hillsides were covered in trees which would "pull the rain down". Elizabeth is not a scientist but she has got the basic gist.