The water point
The author returns to her home town, Cape Town, which may soon become the world’s first major city to run out of water. The crisis also exacerbates old divisions.
Cape Town (via PXhere).
A row of cars, wheels half-hanging from the pavement, has become a fixture on this once-quiet, treed road. The chain of vehicles stretches up the hill, as bodies shuffle from the water point, loaded with however much water can be carried. The containers vary as much as their carriers: battered old bottles, handle-less buckets that have seen better days, and expensive jerry-cans ready-and-waiting for end-of-days scenarios. It certainly feels like it: eruptions of anger at the public water spring are increasingly common, water in 5 liter bottles are sold-out at most stores, while neighbors monitor one another to see whose grass remains stubbornly green, in this once-in-a-century drought.
