Water

Ten years ago the people in my community were washing their clothes in the river. They have memories of the first time that their water came from the aqueduct pipe. I have many colleagues working in communities that are still planning and constructing systems to bring water to their houses a couple days a week. Running water changes the culture of a place, completely changes the way of life and the health of the people and the environment. Knowing these people as they are now, it is mind boggling for me to think of them moving their water completely by hand, washing and bathing in the rivers which we use now only for recreation and for the extraction of sand and river crab.

So if we don’t get our water from the river here where does it come from? Many residents of the US answer either ‘the city’ or ‘the well,’ as the people here in the Dominican campo say ‘the aqueduct.’ What magical places then, these cities, wells and aqueducts – constantly producing an infinite amount of drinkably, bathably, washably clean water, just turn on the faucet! But really, where does it come from? Is it possible to use it all up? Especially on a relatively small island surrounded entirely by salt water…

So I started an investigation, like an explorer searching for a lost city, or more appropriately a fountain of youth…a fountain of life, if you will.

I began with the aqueduct. I happen to work with the organization that manages it and, showing interest, one of the guys agreed to plan a day trip with me to where it all begins. Or so I thought. The day came, we packed lunch and headed South into the mountains. The road is unpaved and the closer we got to our destination the smaller and bumpier the beaten path became. The view from my house is a gorgeous but it gets even better as the mountains get higher and the road drops of hundreds of feet to the full flowing, blue Rio Bao. More than an hour later we reached the national park building where Maximo, a chubby elf of a man has the job of park guard. His main duty appears to entail eating and playing dominoes with himself. Hey, at least park guards are written into the budget.

The hike from here to ‘la obra de toma’ – the building of take is an hour. This is a small dam where they extract the water from the river which is bound for my house. En route of the semi strenuous hike in the mid day sun my collegeue shares with me that a fungus destroyed part of his nervous system in his head, he’s had three operations and he has asthma. I think to myself, ‘perhaps I should have come more prepared to this day hike…Lets see, in my backpack right now I have enough bananas, casave bread, water and pistachios (thanks mom and dad!) to sustain us for days, I have a long sleeved Patagonia baselayer – versatile enough for many emergency situations, a camera – should we need to document our final days, and a cell phone with no signal – should we find use to for the alarm, calculator or Pong-like game, Brick Attack.

I was extremely excited to reach the obra thinking, “Wow, to see where the water we use for everything really comes from!” I climbed on top of the giant cement box that filters out the sand to get a better look up at the river flowing into the iron grate bound for the pipes. From here I could see upstream to a series of small waterfalls flowing out of the forest…but wait…this isn’t the beginning…this is only where the aqueduct starts, not the water! Where does the water come from? “The aqueduct,” say the people who use the faucet. “The river,” say the people who run the aqueduct. But here the trail ends, what do the people who run the river say? I plan to find out.