The other day as we were eating lunch, a call came in from the front gate to let the city utilities guy come in to read the water meter. The thing is, it is a complete joke.
The Lanes have a link to the city water line, but haven’t had water consistently come in for years. “We had it for one day in February, and then 2 years before that.” Even if water came in consistently, they wouldn’t use it. Last year when Zimbabwe was still suffering from hyperinflation (before they switched entirely to the US dollar) the city of Harare essentially couldn’t pay for the chemicals needed to purify their city water. A cholera epidemic affecting hundreds of thousands ensued, with several thousand actually dying. To add insult to injury, while the World Health Organization (WHO) was still setting up clinics by the thousands, and international envoys were scrambling to reach people, President Mugabe stood in a press conference and declared that all the cholera had been eradicated from Zimbabwe by his government.
Hence most of the people who can afford not to use municipal water use either water from a borehole in their yard (and have the threat of the pump being stolen), or have the water shipped in large containers (like the diplomats who work for the American Embassy).
Even though the Lanes don’t use the city water, they still get a bill each month for $10 form the city for having a line at the house. And yet each month the guy comes to read the water meter…
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