Two days ago was the fifth day we had no water (this happened by surprise). I remembered that day was very hot. The temperature (feeling sensation) was about 35 degrees Celsius (95 F), in Lima 31 degrees is unbearable because the weather usually has an average of 90% humidity.
I went out from home in my bicycle around 12:00 to breath some less rarefied air. I ride through the narrow and old looking streets of Barranco and suddenly, from time to time, I saw lines and lines of people with colorful buckets waiting to receive some water from reservoirs (located at parks), firemen trucks and cisterns. Children were playing in these lines, some of them using skateboards that later were used to ease the movement of the picturesque buckets. Some policemen were trying to organize the people who were in line but after four days without water, many were quickly losing their patience fearing the water wouldn't be enough to fill all the containers.
It was something far away from routine, rarely seen where I live. Exciting but also dramatic. I realize how easily our way of life can be altered, how thin our moral and citizenship is broken when a crisis hits us, and how nobody is under control of anything, not even oneself.
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