Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer
Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2021 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER TWENTY
"Centrifugal Force"
Ok, enough with the flowery descriptions, the rainbows-and-unicorns mindset of the previous chapter. Time for a serious reality check: It’s called “subsistence living” for a reason. "Subsistence" means that you spend ALL your time involved in ONLY the things that keep you alive: food, water, and fuel. It’s an endless hamster-wheel of barely keeping up with life, never enabling you to advance your agenda, or be creative beyond the current moment of survival.
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Now, here it was, nearly the end-of-March 1976, and we’d still been hauling pigtail buckets from the river to the house. Every day, twice a day, morning and evening. It was time-consuming, back-breaking work, but critically necessary – not only for dishes, handwashing, cleaning, and diaper changes, but also for the tomato seedlings we’d germinated in pots on the front porch to get a head-start on food production. They were already quite tall, and needed transplanting, at which time they would need even more water. Once we got the pump, it would profoundly change our lives in so many ways. Until then, our efforts were becoming a logjam.
The purchase of a pump should have happened sooner, but the Mennonites had not been able to obtain one for sale. Apparently, a bomba-de-agua could had in Flores, but Guatemalan roads had remained at least partially blocked ever since the earthquake six weeks earlier. Further complicating things was the fact that we still didn’t have a vehicle, not since the sale of the old step-van – although our Mennonite friend, Harold Kratzer from Red Creek, told us of an old Toyota that might be coming up for sale at Spanish Lookout.
So, my husband, along with one of our new friends with a pickup, had taken off for Flores to brave the wilds-beyond-Melchior and hopefully circumvent whatever obstacles the terramoto had left behind. While he was gone for those few days, I had arranged for a young Spanish boy named Antonio from Santa Elena, to come up and stay with me as companion. We had become friends with the family. It was a good precaution. With our closest neighbour, Victorito Tut, a quarter mile away, and zero method-of-communication with the outside world, twelve-year-old Antonio could also act as a runner in case of emergency.
Meanwhile, I had been learning a lot about water pumps. There were three basic types, and they all had specific uses and limitations: centrifugal pumps, positive-displacement piston pumps, and submersible jet pumps. During the years that followed in Belize, I would eventually own and operate all three, in that respective order, each in its appropriate circumstance and necessity.
This centrifugal pump would need to be situated close to the river, but not too close. An earthen shelf must be excavated in the bank, positioning the pump close enough for the foot-hose to dip into a deep pocket of water (so as not to suck up silt), and yet high enough above the river to provide a straight shot for the delivery pipe, up to the new tank we had mounted on a raised stand next to the house. With the correct mathematical equation – figuring all aspects of horsepower, lift, pipe diameter, resistance, and foot position – the water would have to push the 80 feet necessary to breach the top lip of the tank. We could then simply draw buckets at ground level. It would be a godsend.
What an indescribable feeling when the little Briggs & Stratton had arrived! The bench had been cut into the bank, the pump sturdily mounted. The end of the foot-hose was rigged in a position of neutral buoyancy – by means of a float on the water’s surface, and a weight resting on the bottom. We pulled the ripcord, watched as the machine chug to life, and then raced up the hill in eager anticipation. And then, miracles of miracles, the water began to eject from the delivery pipe into the water tank. We had water. It was nothing short of a miracle. WE HAD WATER!
The relief was immense. Although I still did laundry in the river on occasion, more often than not, I chose to put my washtub on the front steps, and save the river just for fun, for swimming and bathing. The blessed choice provided convenience when my son was sleeping, or I was multi-tasking with cooking, gardening, or tending the goats. Now, having abundant water, the tomatoes had seemed to grow a foot in just a few days – from the very moment their little rooty-toes had hit the rich alluvial soil.
Our goats were also thriving. There was the mischievous naughty-nanny, Space-Goat, and her baby, Scape-Goat (see Chapter Fifteen “Space-Goat Wears the Devil’s Pentangle.”) And now, the good and sweet-natured Fine-Goat had finally given us not two, but three – little black-and-white … oh, no… ALL males. (Yikes! Again?) Good for those who loved curry-goat, but not so great when we needed females to build a herd.
My small son was about as happy as a baby could be. He had almost no toys, per se, but was perfectly content with the proverbial two sticks and a rock, plus his small woven hammock for swinging and napping, and the new baby goats we decided to name after the Three Stooges – Larry, Curly, and Moe.