Thursday, Mar 10, 2016

The water shortage continues in town. As I walk around I see water trucks filling up the cisterns of various buildings. As far as I know, our building has not yet had to have a water truck fill our cistern. When I turn on the taps I am still getting water from them. We are conserving water though…you know the saying, “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”. Also, putting off doing our clothes washes. This is a very different experience than what we are used to having!

There was a protest today by the locals at the south end of Bahia. They put old tires across the main road and and lit them on fire to stop traffic going through town. FB_IMG_1457708001993I guess the mayor is not taking care of, or adequately addressing, getting the main water line fixed and the locals have had it.

If we were in a smaller fishing village I might understand how it could take a long time to get a main water line fixed. Here in Bahia though it seems weird to have high rise condos lining the waterfronts, and have what appears to be some backwards, hick attitude in maintaining basic services. Bottom line, you can build something shiny and nice here…but it is still here, and here is different than North America.

Speaking of building, our building is undergoing some repairs on the supporting pillars. 20160310_151737 For over a week now, 4 men have been chipping away at concrete walls on the ground floor to expose the support pillars underneath. This is all hand work done with a hammer and chisel. It looks like back breaking work really.

I guess these support pillars are going to be reinforced with new steel. As they are chipping away at them, Heidi and I joke that we hope they don’t chip away too much! Today the men are on the roof, all sitting on a cross beam chipping away at it. 20160310_151751 The things people do here. Amazing.

The tide was very high late this afternoon. The waves rolled in, crashed on the breakwall, and then water shot high into the air soaking anyone on the malecon in its path.

https://youtu.be/lLqg0QIYY04%20

Easton and I watched for awhile from our balcony, then decided it looked like too much fun to miss.  So we changed into our board shorts and headed down to get wet! Heidi and Keeper came too but kept a far distance to stay dry.

https://youtu.be/n_eQHmDZAzs%20

Chao!