Free interpretation based on Mohammad’s interview
In December
2018, I received a frantic phone call from Timtda village that water was
leaking from a buried pipe. I quickly
made it to the house in question and, indeed, the entry to the house was
getting muddier because the buried pipe seems to be leaking. The grandfather comes out of the house in a
state of panic and seemingly quite distraught saying that “my grandson was
playing here and cut off the pipe”. This
seemed odd, how can a 7 year old, even playing rough reach a pipe buried at 60
cm deep? What did he play with to cause
such a damage? This story somehow was
unlikely but given the venerable age of this man, I could not ask any further
and I had to fix the water leak as this affects water availability to the
remaining households.
As I was
digging, the grandfather went inside to make tea. The child stayed behind and I started asking him
about the game he was playing, at which he whispered how it was his grandfather
who broke the pipe when trying to install bricks at the entrance of the house.
The grandfather was apparently extremely worried that he would be the cause for
water shortage in the entire village. It seemed much more befitting to say it
was the doing of a child, that is someone with no maturity, not knowing there
are consequences to actions and thus can be easily pardoned. That it was an
accident did not seem to make sense to the grandfather who thought that just
because he caused the leak, he was responsible and may have not only to pay
extra-money for the water, but may have to face his fellow-villagers. Understanding this, I continued working and
fixed the leak, I also went in and had tea but never told the grandfather I
knew. What was more important is that no water would continue to leak and that,
the grandfather and I shared profoundly, no water-waste because we both know
how valuable such a substance is.
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| Some Playing time after a very hard day of work on the Fog-Water Project |
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