Jordan not only has a severe water problem, but also does not have the resources to purchase water.
I don't drink the water here as I was told by an educated Jordanian that sometimes it's clean and sometimes not. Having housed many of the local bugs in Afghan water, I decided to play it safe and use bottled water for everything.
Except showering and washing my hands. Which is a problem at the end of each month. Apparently there is a water distribution plan in Jordan - households (and I guess hotels) receive a "supply" of water monthly.
I'm not sure exactly how this works and couldn't find any good information on line, but...what it means is that yesterday, on the 27th of the month, the shower stream was insufficient to wash my hair or all parts of my body.
And earlier yesterday we had to visit the Police Department to extend our visas. We were fingerprinted during the process and ended up with black/blue ink on all fingers. We asked for a bathroom to wash our hands and were told "No water."
Huh?
Indeed, it was true. We were handed wipes that had been moistened with bottled water. The water supply at the Police Department was non-existent.
Mike and Will visited the toilet. No toilet paper, but there was, of course the hose affair for washing whatever needed to be washed. But no water. As Mike said, it didn't bear thinking about.
We figured perhaps the Police were being the "good guys" and restricting their water supply to set a good example for the rest of the country. Who knows.
As a political note, Jordan (Lebanon and Turkey) have taken in the bulk of the refugees from Syria. The situation is exacerbating the on-going scarcity of water in Jordan. (http://world.time.com/2013/04/04/how-syrias-refugee-crisis-is-draining-jordans-scarce-water-supply).
As an aside about the paperwork at the Police Department. The forms were in Arabic - luckily we only had to fill out our names, and passport numbers. But the forms also asked for our birth date. We figured we had to put the date in Arabic numbers and in their peculiar (read different) order with regard to month, day and year and the numbers within the year. I'm not sure but I think I said I was 114 years old...
I don't drink the water here as I was told by an educated Jordanian that sometimes it's clean and sometimes not. Having housed many of the local bugs in Afghan water, I decided to play it safe and use bottled water for everything.
Except showering and washing my hands. Which is a problem at the end of each month. Apparently there is a water distribution plan in Jordan - households (and I guess hotels) receive a "supply" of water monthly.
I'm not sure exactly how this works and couldn't find any good information on line, but...what it means is that yesterday, on the 27th of the month, the shower stream was insufficient to wash my hair or all parts of my body.
And earlier yesterday we had to visit the Police Department to extend our visas. We were fingerprinted during the process and ended up with black/blue ink on all fingers. We asked for a bathroom to wash our hands and were told "No water."
Huh?
Indeed, it was true. We were handed wipes that had been moistened with bottled water. The water supply at the Police Department was non-existent.
Mike and Will visited the toilet. No toilet paper, but there was, of course the hose affair for washing whatever needed to be washed. But no water. As Mike said, it didn't bear thinking about.
We figured perhaps the Police were being the "good guys" and restricting their water supply to set a good example for the rest of the country. Who knows.
As a political note, Jordan (Lebanon and Turkey) have taken in the bulk of the refugees from Syria. The situation is exacerbating the on-going scarcity of water in Jordan. (http://world.time.com/2013/04/04/how-syrias-refugee-crisis-is-draining-jordans-scarce-water-supply).
As an aside about the paperwork at the Police Department. The forms were in Arabic - luckily we only had to fill out our names, and passport numbers. But the forms also asked for our birth date. We figured we had to put the date in Arabic numbers and in their peculiar (read different) order with regard to month, day and year and the numbers within the year. I'm not sure but I think I said I was 114 years old...
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