After another stiflingly hot day in Cape Town (in the middle of April, too!), I know I am not alone in saying that the initial novelty of severe water restrictions and swapping of water-saving tips is definitely starting to wear off. Lugging two 10-litre buckets of grey water from the tank to the plants has toned the upper body and greatly reduced the underarm flab, but the prospect of doing this in the long term makes one's spirit flag and interest in gardening turns from beds of colourful petunias, dahlias, gaillardias, gazanias, phlox and all those pretty mass displays we have become accustomed to in our lives, to starkly angular aloes and other succulent plants that now form our prospective landscape. Gone are the green swathes of lawn, the grating sound of a lawnmower on a Saturday morning, and the shimmering spray of sprinklers waving back and forth to keep the space between the house and the fence looking like Kirstenbosch. We are having to get used to paving, stone chips, fake grass and concrete.
Nor can we sit in our living rooms and look out across a transformed garden, because the windows are so caked with dust and sea spray after six months of unseasonal southeaster that we don't need to close the blinds any more. Cleaning the house has become almost impossible on 50 litres of water a day. And let's not even contemplate the damage being done to the sewerage system by limiting the amount of flushing we are allowed.
A new kind of crime is manifesting. Water theft. JoJo tanks have been depleted in the middle of the night, and the tanks themselves stolen the next night, being light enough when empty. Unoccupied houses run the risk of having hoses attached to all outside taps and van loads of water tanks filled and taken away to be sold. These are true stories. It seems the noble savage is truly exposed in times of shortage of the necessities of life.
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