Wet and wild!

Before I’m flooded with questions – this is about the ebb and flow of my relationship with water.

The good news is that it’s now raining. A lot.

This certainly is welcome. We all need water to drink of course, and at the end of the dry season here in rural north-west Cambodia, it was getting increasingly scarce. There’s no mains supply here, so when the hospital’s well ran dry, we had to rely on back-up from the lake. Worryingly, this was rapidly evaporating too – not helped by local folk flooding in on tractors to fill their buckets and bowls.

But now we are inundated with water! Not only is it great news for drinking, it’s important for eating too. Food here means rice, and now the rain has arrived the new crop is being planted. The growing cycle is now flowing again, giving us all confidence that tomorrow we’ll be given our daily bread (or rather bor-bor, a watery rice porridge).

This is also very pleasing aesthetically – the previously dry, barren fields have now dissolved into beautiful, vibrant green as far as the eye can see.

There are more positives – with the rain comes cooler weather. Even hardy Cambodians were wilting at the end of the dry season. Constant temperatures in the forties are draining, uncomfortable and frankly unproductive – I spent most of my time drowning in sweat and just trying to cool down. Now temperatures are sinking even into the twenties – time for hot water bottles!

So basically rain equals a deluge of good news. But let’s not get swept away – it’s not all positive.

You see, whilst we previously didn’t have enough water, now we have too damn much. The drains, such as they are, rarely cope, so I’ve had a few unpleasant morning surprises floating round my kitchen floor.

And if we can’t cope inside, you should see the roads! Like the fields, the dry, dusty dirt tracks have also transformed – but this time into slippery, sludge-filled quagmires. It’s far worse than any mud I’ve seen before – it’s clingy, gloopy, slimy and seeps in everywhere!

Ironically, one of the worst things about the rain is that I’m now short of water. The moto who ships bottles to my house can no longer navigate the main stream (do I mean street?) – so while I negotiate a solution I am relunctantly resorting to evil plastic bottles. And I get soaking wet getting them. Surely, at least by Alanis Morisette’s rather fluid definition, this has to be ironic?

Oh, and it’s not just the water that’s now off. No internet for days – not even at Thmar Puok’s proud new ‘internet cafe’. So ok, it’s a few wooden benches and some of those huge telly monitors (remember them?), but here it’s a huge dive forward. Sadly, after three visits, I’ve yet to see anything working. This is partly because the rain has also disrupted the flow of electricity. Canoodling by candlelight may be soppily romantic, but I assure you slipping on soggy spiders is nothing to wax lyrical about.

Overall though, the wet season is undoubtedly good news - it ensures we all have enough to drink, whilst also giving me the excuse to flood my prose with bucket-loads of water-related puns.