The Little Poppy

We had rented the house with electricity and water included. One day there was no electricity. We found out when our neighbour down the hill who was known to us as Big Juan called out “Hay luz?” meaning have you electricity? Esther thought that he was saying “How are you?” and replied accordingly. We checked the lights and soon knew what he had been saying. I went to the transformer and saw that all the area was served on the same incoming line. Next stop was to the village and the electric company. I was told that the power was off because the landlord had not paid the bill for sometime, before we had moved in fact. The area was cut off because the switch was on the wrong side of the transformer as far as I could see. Cut one off cut them all off. To get power the bill had to be paid. “I will pay”, I said. “How?”. “By cash”. Power was on five minutes after they had counted the cash. My next rent cheque was accompanied by the electric bill. Big Juan was so pleased that we were invited for coffee. While there he said that he had a grapefruit tree but didn’t like the grapefruit so we could help ourselves at any time which we very thankfully did.

Then there was the eternal water problem. We soon found out that there was not enough water in the well to supply the household needs. There was a pressure pump in the well which was supposed to do the job, but if there was no water? I bought a little electric pump and a piece of hose and kept the well in water from the reservoir. Probably against the water usage rules but no one ever questioned us. We bought our drinking water in Coin. The irrigation water came from up in the mountains and at a distribution point was allocated to the various farms. Ours came down to the pool/reservoir to be used as needed for the fruit trees. Our landlord one time (his wife told us) thought that he would get a little extra and went to the distribution point at night and shifted more water to his line. He was very nearly shot. The locals of course had a guard on the water. It was after all their lifeline. One day a nice, new, big car drove up and the owners introduced themselves as the people who had sold the property to our landlord. They asked during the general conversation if the new owner had found water yet. They told us that the well he had dug collected only water that had seeped from the irrigation canals. One wonders if our landlord had been told that he might find water if he drilled. More likely he knew better, he came from Germany and they were only Spaniards. He had probably forgotten that the Spaniards and the Moors before them had been unable to find any water and that they had been around for a long time.