Water

Our pipes have been frozen since New Year's. For the first couple of weeks, our neighbors still had water, and we went to their house to fill up buckets every few days. Then their pipes froze as well. Since then the nearest water source is 1/2 mile away. It must be the only water source for quite some distance, because every time I go there, several people are lined up, and you can see others walking in/out with empty/full containers. In this culture, fetching water seems to be a woman's job, based on who is usually lined up at the tap. Here were a few who were there today when I went to fill up.
In our family, however, fetching water is still a man's job. As much as any reason, this is probably due to the fact that the containers we fill are not the little 5 liter ones in the photo above. I pick up 100 liters (26 gal) at a time, and I borrow the team car to do it. We have enough water storage at our place for about 250 liters (66 gal), and I fill up once a week. I think Jen would struggle to get these up to our second floor apartment.
The following statistics are from the UN Human Development Report, 2006: The average daily per capita water consumption for about one-third (1.8 billion) of the poorest people in the world is 20 liters (5 gal). Americans, on the other hand, lead the world with a shocking 600 liters (158 gal) per day (compare this with Brits, who use 150 liters (40 gal) per day).

These particular Americans seem to be using about 30 liters per day as a family (To be fair, I should mention that this does not include the water that we use when we visit our colleagues who still have water to use a shower or do a load of laundry). The prospect of carrying all of our water into the house is all the incentive we need to conserve.

Regarding electricity, the Feb 10 date that the British Embassy was warning us of has come and gone and we are typically still getting 15-20 hours of electricity per day. But most of the city, along with several of our colleagues, is down to 0-4 hours per day, which is particularly difficult with these temps when you rely on electric heat. We apparently live in the right part of town. We stumbled across this BBC report on the situation, and found it ironic that we could sit in our lit and heated house and download it off the internet.