Living in Mexico - Archives: January 2005
Sunday, January 2, 2005
What would you do if you had to spend one week without running water or electricity? Does this sound like a prehistoric horror story reminiscent of a cromagnon lifestyle made of mammoth hunting and cave dwelling? Not at all, this is what you may have the chance to experience today in so-called “modern” Mexico.
Around Christmas day, the pipe providing our neighborhood with water burst. It took over a day for the state-owned water company emergency response service to plug the pipe, after a loss of untold amounts of gallons of water in an area where this is a scarce resource.
Since that day and until today, over one week later, the trivial repair has still not been done! I imagine that the government employees responsible for the work are enjoying well deserved vacations after a year of hard toiling repairing water pipes that have a habit of bursting every 6 months, undoubtedly because of the superior quality of the labor and material used.
In the meantime I’m basking in the refined delight of washing with drinking water bottles in order to maintain a minimum of personal hygiene. Should I be tempted to complain I can consider the even worse fate of inhabitants of a neighborhood near Tlahuac (Mexico D.F.) which remained one week without electricity since the area’s transformer failed! I almost feel blessed by unearthly luck to be missing only water!
Water and electricity are basic utility services that short of major accidents (the explosion in a gas factory near Melbourne, Australia, in 1999 or 2000 comes to my mind, resulting in a week without hot water in mid-Winter) are very reliable in developed countries – but not in Mexico.
The exclusive office area where my business is located has been the victim of dozens of power cuts last year, some of them lasting for several hours. 2005 might be here but I doubt that it will bring much change in a country where basic infrastructure problems remain the norm rather than the exception.
