On Tuesday of last week, the announcement made by city officials to inform us the water pumps had been repaired in Greenville was met with an almost audible sigh of relief.
With those announcements came a caveat, the system had to be recharged before full pressure and service could be realized in homes.
I woke up Wednesday morning anticipating the system to have recharged overnight, but what I was met with was an all-too-familiar bare dribble from the shower head.
I’d seen this before during the previous three days and for a couple weeks on an island in the Caribbean.
On that island, Cuba, people have lived with almost no water pressure for most of their lives.
This low water pressure, and the crumbling infrastructure, is the reason I’ve been to Cuba and our church works with Living Waters for the World.
It’s the same reason we are under a boil-water advisory this week.
When a water system loses pressure, it allows outside influences into the system. While under pressure, leaks are constantly pushing water out and thus not allowing untreated elements back in.
The problem in Cuba is the system constantly loses pressure and the water is rarely treated at the source.
In fact, the pressure was so weak at a few of the places we stayed, you’d have to run around in the shower to catch even a few dribbles of water.
For us, for the week, it was an inconvenience.
For the Cubans, it was a way of life and an impediment.
Every day of their lives their thoughts turned to water and the safe procurement of it.
Most didn’t have the resources to boil water constantly as energy is expensive and unreliable.
In towns like Placetas access to clean running water was simply unavailable.
The only source of clean water came in bottled form, until our church partnered with the Adventist Church in Placetas to install a clean water system.
Just more than a year ago we landed in Havana with sacks full of equipment and parts ready to get to work with the people in Placetas.
While there, we found a group of people we instantly knew would create a strong partnership.
In the last year, the system at Placetas has produced and served more than 100,000 gallons of agua pura (purified water.)
We aren’t nearly as cutoff from our partners in Cuba as we once were and we are able to communicate, if not regularly, often enough to get a sense of the trouble and triumph.
It’s hard to tell really how COVID-19 has affected the community there, but our partners said the water system couldn’t have come at a more needed time.
They were one of the few churches in the area that didn’t shut down during COVID and actually increased their work in the community with food deliveries and water service.
Every person in Greenville should be proud of the folks in Placetas because it is a partnership between our two communities to provide this service.
The money raised from First Presbyterian Church’s Mardi Gras Madness funds the purchase of equipment, the stock of consumable parts and the transportation of the mission team.
This week, albeit as a result of a catastrophic weather event, the people here are feeling for a short time what the people of Cuba live with every day.
We’ve been forced to capture what water we can and either boil it or somehow purify it. Our showers don’t work. Our toilets may not flush.
But this is only temporary.
Remember these feelings of insecurity and loss of comfort.
Remember the anger and confusion about how something like this could happen.
But, mostly, remember there are people for whom this is every day of their life and it doesn’t take much to give them a hand of partnership and assistance.
Jon Alverson is proud to be publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.comor call him at 335-1155.
