The loss of a vital part of the team

I have found out why the showers were down last night, and why they continue to be down today.

My particular bathroom is not hooked into the city water, or wherever the underground pipes run. We are fed by an above ground tank which is a governmentally-wonderful idea in a desert. This causes the cold water to be indistinguishable from the hot water to the point that I still do not know which is the cold and which is the hot water tap in the shower. I probably knew at some point in April, but now there is no distinction and I keep telling myself alternatively that I remember the plumbing following the left-hot, right-cold convention and that I remember it being switched. Maybe they both feed from the same place. I don't know.

There is another design feature to my bathroom's plumbing being separate from the pipes underground: it is required to be filled daily by a truck. I suppose that the truck gets its water from a tap and I prefer not to contemplate the source farther than that. I don't know why they don't just run a pipe out, but KBR in all of their wisdom has decided that it is cheaper (or at least more lucrative) to hire someone to make the water run than to dig a ditch and put in a pipe.

Back to the lack of showers. There is a rumor going around that this water truck got blown up during one of the mortar attacks. The drive was not in it at the time, or I would be able to confirm this by reading the casualty report. So I have no way of knowing whether the truck was blown up or if it is just broken down. The bottom line is that it doesn't really matter since there is no water. Before you start feeling too bad for me, the next shower down still has water so I just have to walk a little farther. Ah, the trials of war!!