Last weekend, the city’s water crisis was all over the news. From what I gathered — and I’m still figuring out how to read newspapers in Spanish — the government planned to shut off water to certain neighborhoods during the last three days of the month, in order to conserve and fix problems with the water system.
I couldn’t ever figure out which neighborhoods would be affected, so I assumed we’d wake up Saturday morning without water. Which, for us, isn’t that huge of a deal — we have purified water to drink and cook with. (And showers, eh, they can wait on the weekend.)
So on Saturday, I turned on the faucets. They worked normally. Then I looked at the paper online. Some of DF’s outlying neighborhoods — where people can’t afford to buy water — didn’t have any.
The fact that these people had no water and we did made no sense to me. If you’re going to shut off water for conservation purposes, why not do it city-wide? I told this to a friend of mine, and she said the city would never shut off water in our neighborhood. Too many embassy employees live here.
Suddenly I felt bad for being so blase about the lack of water in the first place. Of course we can buy our own. We just walk down the street to the supermarket, or tell our doorman we’re out, and boom. It’s there. It’s so easy to forget that there are thousands of people who can’t do this.
Of course, this raises the eternal question about Mexico, which is why so many people here still live in poverty, while the rich — or even solidly middle-class — lead normal first-world lives. It’s part of what makes the city so chaotic and fascinating, with entrepreneurs crowding the subways and the neighborhood knife-sharpener whistling down the street. But the concept of having so much more than so many other people is a hard thing to get used to. I don’t know that I ever will, to be honest.
I was chatting with Lola, our housekeeper, the other day and she mentioned she had a 12-year-old daughter. “But only one,” she said. “I didn’t want another because it’s too tough in this world.”
I was so happy when our housekeeper, Pati, introduced me to her daughter, a college student. It’s weird to have a housekeeper, but it’s great to know her daughter is getting a full education, thanks to Pati and her husband’s hard work.
But I don’t think that’s the norm, and it’s hard for Americans (or at least me) to accept a country that doesn’t have the American Dream. The rich here don’t seem particularly philanthropic, which adds to the problem.
Yeah, I sensed that too. It’s weird because I’d like to help somehow, but I’m not exactly sure what I can do, besides trying to be self-aware. (Because what does that really do?) I’ve thought about volunteering somewhere. I may look into that more after things settle down with my apartment search.