The Water Company

In Naga, we're pretty much up to the same old yesterday. Katy and I finished painting a sign that the Surf the Nations team started. Here's a photo of Katy painting in some images along the bottom of the sign.


With two days left in the Philippines, I wanted every last day to be fruitful so we picked up some mangoes and lanzones at the fruit stand across the street from Orange Brutus. These are a few of my favorite fruits in the Philippines. I like mangosteens too, but I like lanzones more. In only took my four tries to eat lanzones right too. There's a secret to peeling the fruit so your hands don't get all sappy sticky.


The biggest commotion of the day was a private water company laying a waterline. If you recall, the neighborhood of Lote has been without water for the past 1 1/2 years and the city hasn't done anything about it. So yesterday a truck full of five people from a private water company showed up. Apparently they have a water source up in the hills that they are willing to bring down here for a price.

This private company is charging 4,500 pesos (about $100) for hookup and a monthly fee of 150 pesos ($30ish) plus fee for however much you use. When it isn't the rainy season, Vance has to pay 50 pesos every three days for someone to drive in and deliver water to the house. The sad thing is that for most of the people in the neighborhood, they still won't be able to afford the cost of having running water.

Here are the men work:

It takes one to operate the jackhammer, one to shovel a few things occasionally and the other three to stand and watch.


Notice how deep they lay the waterline in this photo above. It's pretty much going to be right on the surface with a thin layer of cement on top. Katy thinks it is so they can access it easier if it springs a leak. When they were finished for the day, they tested the line and let people in the neighborhood take home buckets of water. The guy in this photo has a rather large blue bucket of water riding shotgun in his pedicab.

It is so easy to take things for granted in America. Water is an important necessity of life it is just too bad that so few people in this neighborhood have easy access to this necessity.