In houses where no water has entered for days, residents are now using plastic bags when they need to go to the toilet.

By Juan Diego Rodríguez (14 years)

HAVANA TIMES – The trick is to insert a hose into the pipes that run through the streets and sidewalks in front of the houses. Once the right place is found, in the artery through which the liquid flows, the water thief can begin the robbery. “When I hear the faint sound of the pumps in the morning, I know immediately that the water has arrived. The problem is that it comes with so little force that it does not rise into the tanks or fill the cisterns,” says Dinorah, a resident of the Luyanó neighborhood in Diez de Octubre, who works with 14ymedio.

On Rodríguez Street, near where the woman from Havana lives, water is rare and residents have decided to “buy these little devices” to make the most of the days when there is water. The problem, says Dinorah, is that “the little water that comes in is no longer distributed evenly and while some can replenish their reserves thanks to the turbine, others do not receive a drop,” she explains.

And to top it all off, she adds: “In a land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, so whoever has the pump that pulls the most gets the most water,” she says.

Dinorah is aware that water theft is not a modern practice. “It has always been done, but now everyone steals water, even if others don’t get it,” she explains. Now, she continues, the pumps are even sold in SMSEs. “The other day my husband went to a private hardware store and there was a man standing at the counter asking if the turbine they were selling there could also be used to steal water,” she recalls.

“People mistakenly believe that the water thief produces water. It has nothing to do with that. If a lot of people have these pumps in front of your house, your cistern will not fill up. The result is a case of ‘every man for himself,'” she reflects.

The lack of water has led to a truly scatological situation in some parts of the capital. “I was lucky because I was able to leave the house for a few days and still had water in the cistern, but in my sister’s house they replaced the toilet bowl with a plastic basket,” says Clara, another resident of Diez de Octubre.

According to the neighbor, both her family in the municipality of Nuevo Vedado and those who live closer in Luyanó have started using the typical supply of plastic bags in Cuban homes when “nature calls them.” “What else are they supposed to do if they can’t flush the toilets? Well, they put the bag in a bucket, like a toilet, and then they tie it up and throw it in the garbage dump,” she says with a certain modesty.

Clara invited her sister and nephews to her house for a bath and asked them to bring dirty clothes to wash. “The water they have, they have to save for cooking and drinking for now,” she says, “but when my supply runs out, we’ll have to see where we can get water from,” she says.

Since the Havanaer wrote an article in Tribuna de La Habana When she received a report about the interruption of the water supply to Luyanó and other neighborhoods of the municipality, she decided to save every drop of water she could. However, some neighbors do not have cisterns or large tanks in which to store water for several days.

“Two blocks from here yesterday some neighbors caused a scandal and the director of Waters of Havana came and brought a tanker. The neighbors brought a little water with their buckets, but everyone knows that this is only temporary and that we will have a hard time if the supply is not restored,” Clara analyzes.

At the moment, the lack of hygiene is getting worse and the garbage dumps are getting bigger with the new invasion of “jabitas“ (small bags) and their peculiar smell, while the people of Havana dig in the ditches and alleys looking for a pipe to connect their thief, in an area that looks more and more like something out of a western movie every day.

Translated from Spanish to English by Translate Cuba.

Read more from Cuba in the Havana Times here.