Tiffany talks Waterworks in Peru

This week we received an update from Tiffany, our JPC working as a Donor Relations Officer for UNICEF in Peru.

Her IDDIP internship thus far has included attending meetings with the World Bank and the IMF. However, on more of unofficial note, Tiffany shared a fun anecdote about her first week getting set up in Lima.

Read on to learn how this Thanksgiving she added 'showering' to her list of things to be thankful for.

Naked and Afraid: the joys of plumbing in Lima 

 

Let me preface this by saying that living conditions I have experienced in Miraflores, Lima are by no means as difficult as they are in other districts in Lima, or outside of the province in the mountains or Amazonian regions.  

 

Let me also preface this by saying that I’m a fairly lax person who usually just rolls with the punches in a lot of situations. That being said – I probably could have done more research on apartment hunting before I left Canada. At home I had done VERY general research on apartments in Miraflores and, seeing that apartments and city life didn’t look drastically different from what I was already use to in Canada, left it at that and let fate settle things once I arrived in Lima. 

 

I had booked an apartment through Airbnb for my first week in Peru which I was fairly confident about - I had never lived abroad and spent a little extra on a modern, comfortable apartment in the hopes that having a nice place to stay would alleviate whatever stress or obstacles I might face in Peru.  

 

The morning after my arrival I did what most people who have traveled for 20 hours do – shower. After about 4 minutes in the shower, I felt the water get icy and was confused. I had pretty much only managed to shampoo my hair before the hot water ran out (let me also add here that August falls in the middle of winter  in Lima, and buildings here don’t have heating systems, so having the water go cold on you is EXTRA unpleasant). 

 

Thinking this was some fluke, I settled for having a clean head of hair and hoped the same wouldn’t occur tomorrow.  

 

It wasn’t.  

 

The next day, and the day after, I couldn’t manage to get hot water for more than a couple of minutes, and was at that point sure something was wrong. I looked around the apartment and came upon a water tank. This is the moment when I learned that residences in Lima operate on individual water tanks (as opposed to a single water heating system for the whole apartment). This was also the sad moment I realized I had no idea how to work the tank or tell if it was working.  

 

I contacted my hostess and let her know what was happening. She told me to flip some switches, turn some dials and to let her know what was happening. I flipped, twisted and toggled anything that moved on the tank, and yet, the water still came out ice cold.  

 

By Thursday (i.e., day four without a shower) my hostess let me know she had arranged for her sister and her husband to come check the tank (my hostess was in New Zealand at the time). This was also the happy moment I came upon a cultural idiosyncrasy that locals fondly label “Peruvian time”. In Peru (or Lima, at least) making good on social engagements and punctuality are not viewed as strictly as they are in Ottawa. Thursday afternoon came and went without me hearing from my hostess or her sister.  

 

It wasn’t until Saturday (day 6, no shower) that my hostess reached out to me again and let me know her sister would arrive on Sunday. The following day, she arrived with her husband, and a plumber, who informed me of what I (stringy haired and legs reaching levels of hair growth I scarcely experience) was already painfully aware of: the water tank was broken. Unfortunately for me, it was Sunday. That meant it was impossible to purchase the pieces that required replacing as the hardware store was closed. They kindly offered to let me stay one more day in the apartment for free, but at that point I had already plotted my escaped to a new apartment where I had exhaustively asked my hostess whether or not the hot water tank worked.  

 

Twenty-four hours later, I washed my hair. Twice. All that to say, if there is one thing I would suggest researching before you go abroad, it would be plumbing.  

 

P.S This story excludes, for the benefit of the reader, how I found out that you cannot flush toilet paper in Peru.