29 Celsius....AT NIGHT!!!

So I thought of writing a few lines regarding certain challenges with the environment and climate here. Many people says that it's so cool that I came to a hot place. Well they are right from one perspective...but also let's check out the challenging side of the situation.

The first one...sleeping. Have you every tried sleeping when at midnight the temprature is 29 Celsius? After a while it is pretty hard to figure out what clothes to get rid of. Especially if you are in a room where no air is moving usually...so by the end of the night you smallest problem will be that it stinks....but also the question might appear in your head: did I sleep at all. Though no challange remain unanswered...so we bought a fan, to have at least air moving in the room. It is nice, but the noise of the fan for a whole night is causing headache, so let's figure out a way to use it and not to get headache. And the solution: fixed fan, pushing air in a way where none of us is sleeping and this way the air is moving, our head staying fine :P

The other one is water. It is a critical question over here...there are no rivers in Jordan (or only small ones) and the water supply is very low...it is definitely a scarce resource (well, in the middle of a desert(half-desert it is not that surprising :P). So there is certain system how you can get water...and it is not a pipe system.

Each flat has a water tank (maximum 2 qubic meters - köbméter :P ) which is ideally getting filled twice a week. Depending on the area it is different when it gets filled, but in my area it is Sunday and Monday (yo not equally splitted). So on Monday you fight for the washing machine, which consumes a lot of water, so you do your laundry on Monday, as in the evening all water gets refilled. Also counting with having 4 people in one apartment you have individually 0,75 cubic meters of water a WEEK....for washing, shower, toilet, cooking, washing dishes. So you definitely do take care of water (actually with 4 people, 2 filling a week it is not that very hard to manage, you just need to take care when you do laundry, how you have shower and small things which consume water). Drinking water is separate from this supply, you can chose to have bottled water, or rather get bigger gallons (for referrence on costs: 1,5 liter of bottled water is 0,5 dinar..... 2 gallons - 40 liter of water - 2 JDs, I think it is obvious which option are we using :P ).

Well the situation is becoming crazy when the weather turns very hot (like in the last one month). It is one thing that usually people use more water (shower mainly, but also just to wash your face or such)....so you consume more. Or you want to consume more, because it also means that there is less water in the country, meaning that sometimes your tank gets filled only once a week!!! What does this mean? - if you are smart than your run out of water on Thursday....and have water back monday morning. If you are not smart, then you have water only for 2-3 days a week. Did you ever tried to have 'shower' from 1,5 liters of (drinking) water? Not the easiest assignement if you ask me.

So naturally this week we are out of water again. Resident consumption is low on water priority list....first agriculutre, then industry....then what is left.

It is not at all about complaining (though I'm not particulary happy about the situation)....it's something better to get used to. This issue will anyways will be way better from October-November, as you start consuming less water and rain starts to fall sometimes (durin summer there is NO rain here, not a single drop or rare rain...there is NO rain! )

The only thing I'm worried about is that Ramadan is here in 1,5 weeks. The weather is definitely not suited for fasting and not drinking anything the whole day and the possibility that I might not be able to have a simple shower at certain nights makes me scared (drinking water is not a problem - that you can always get enough for the night and the morning - you just need to find the right time). So yeah, fasting is definitely gonna be hard.

Though I have made my stand to join the guys in fasting. I also asked myself a few times whether I'm crazy or what...but it is not about the fact that I want a torture. Ok, in a way yes...but it is so nice to talk about Ramadan, here about the importance of it....bullshit. I came here to experience the culture and Ramadan is probably the toughest, nicest and most unique part of it. It is not necesseraly about the religion (before everyone gets scared: I'm not intending to become reliegious, haha), but it is in the culture, it is something normal over here to fast for a month (see, the definition of normal....). And I want to know and experience 'normal' life of it and I want to understand...if it is through a tough way, than it is through a tough way.

Anyways, just wanted to give a bit of insight into what does it mean to live in a developing country in the middle of a half desert, in an arab country. It is some sort of insight about things happening every day, not something outstanding (like now a huge event to write about), but are probably the most identical things about living here. Like water...it is always a critical topic, a critical point of life and in Hungary it is so very normal that you never have water shortage (only pipe breaks, and then everybody is just running a screaming around of not having water :) ).

And also a small new picture go uploaded (and shared in this corner), which many of you asked for - I don't really now how to write down the name of the scarf, so I'm rather not attempting it :P