The Water Woes

One of the regular problems in school then was the water supply. The water tanks on top of the hostel blocks (inside the ceiling) were obviously not enough to cater for the "peak hours" of the bathrooms every morning and evening. I guess the water pressure was not strong enough to refill these tanks during those peak hours. During these periods, only the third floor (top-most) and the ground floor bathrooms would have flowing taps! We from the other floors had to go to one of these bathrooms. Can you imagine the crowd?

I remember that to ensure that I got enough & satisfying shower, I had to get up as early as 5am, to be among the first to utilise the bathroom. I also remember how later on we used to reserve water in our covered pails before we went to bed, so that when we got up we had some water for our perusal. Sometimes, we woke up to find our water reduced. Yes, there were "water thieves"! I know of some girls who were too lazy to "reserve water" the night before, and when they woke up to find a long queue in the bathrooms, they would simply "kebas" (took without permission) ours.

To make things worse, there were times when there was no water at all! During these times, we just had to "lompat pagar" (got our of the school compound) to get water from the wells of the nearby neighbourhood. The local people there then were very sympathetic towards us and were very nice :) . Here's a pic of some of the girls getting water from one of the wells:

And these girls had the time to take photo? But that time they were not taking water for shower. I wonder for what?

I remember there were a couple of times when I actually went with some friends to the girls toilet in the classroom block for my morning shower!

Eventually the school decided to dig our own wells in our hostel compounds! So the boys got a well, and the girls got one too. Since then, we didn't have to go out for water, and the bathrooms were not too crowded anymore, because many of us simply went down to the well for our morning showers! As a girl who grew up with well water, I really enjoyed it then. During peak hours it was like a "party" of shower. Girls would berkemban (folding sarongs to our breasts) and took shower together, fun, fun!

I do not have any pic of the well or near the well. How I wish there are some friends who actually possess some of these pix, and wouldn't mind sharing them with me. Please feel free to email me at sabariahmz@gmail.com to send me the pic.

Recently I had the opportunity to enter the girls' hostel compound, and sad to say the water well is no longer there... :(