In International Student Hostel II, life can be a little….ghetto. Our water goes out often, the power goes out every once in a while, the Internet works maybe 50% of the time, and things are generally pretty broken down.
Coming here, I didn’t really care that parts of our roofing were falling off, and that all the bathrooms had their own quirks in terms of what showers and toilets worked and which were a little sketch. The fact that the communal fridges didn’t get as cold as they should, or not work all together, seemed to be no big deal. Sometimes, the hot plates  in the kitchen shocked us, but that really was just a matter of learning with ones to use and which ones to leave alone.
It also seemed like every student’s room had its own personality. In my room the dresser doors are not attached to the dresser, but merely resting against it. The surfaces of my desk and end table are covered with a tacky picnic style plastic to mask all the scratches and moisture damage. Other rooms have ceiling fans that shake a scary amount if you turned on too high, and others have outlets that don’t work.
That is life in International Student Hostel II. We can rough it. No big deal. On the other hand, life in International Student Hostel I seems to be a little up town. It’s newer, and therefore the facilities are a little nicer, the roofing is not falling apart and the appliances are all in working order. They have an Internet Café, too, so when the Internet goes out- the guy working in the cafe actually believes it’s not working and it gets fixed the same day!  Every time we go tell him that it’s not working in ISH II he responds by explaining that it is working and we need to go try it again.  How stupid does he think we are? We now call the repair guy ourselves with our own cell phones. ISH I also has a little shop on the bottom level that sells things that are relatively hard to get ahold of other places and a café that has a coffee machine. The water rarely goes out, and their power tends to stay on. Life on the other side seems luxurious.
However, none of that really matters, much, until the water goes out. When we have no water, everyone suddenly gets resentful of the rich kids (they aren’t really any richer than we are, they just have access to things we don’t). Why do they get to have consistent, reliable running water when we don’t? I feel like a 4 year old asking why I can’t have a candy too. Luckily- we are able to walk to the other hostel and take a shower there when our water is out.
The problem is that as we are nearing the end of the semester we lose water regularly to the point that we can predict exactly when it will go out. We have multiple theories as to why it goes out (water shortage, bad infrastructure, etc.). At the end of October, we lost it every Friday night ( I would not recommend walking into the bathrooms any time after Saturday morning) and it would not come back on until Monday morning. ISH I always had water though- yay for them. Well now that we are nearing the end of November we have water less than half the time. Monday and Tuesday are our water days which means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we don’t have showers, running water to wash hands or brush teeth, or toilets that flush. Gross.
The worst part is that the porters will not tell us anything. At first, we would ask them when the water would come back on, and they claimed they never knew and brushed us off. However, everyone always got the feeling that they just won’t talk to us. Well, Mie and I have a new theory. We think they are asked NOT to tell the international students when the water will go out. Here’s why we think that: It started to become apparent that the Ghanaian students knew what days and times the water would be out! They would fill their buckets with water from the tank downstairs before that too, ran out of water- and it was only on days before the water goes out. A little suspicious right? Well then yesterday, I was walking out when a porter was telling a Ghanaian student to fill her bucket with water in case we run out of water. When the Ghanaian student left, I turned to the porter and said, “Is the water going to go out again?” and she assured me that “oh no, the water is NOT going to go out- don’t worry- I just told her to fill her bucket because the reserve tank has hardly any water in it.” “Hmmm” I thought, “We are not going to have water tomorrow.” Low and behold, it is Wednesday so the water is out. Fabulous. The porter lied about having water, and told the truth about there being no water in the reserve tank. It is now very apparent to me that they do know exactly when the water will go out and they relay it to the Ghanaian students, but the international students are left in the dark.  Great; and I can’t even get a bucket of water for a bucket shower.
Well, now ISH I doesn’t have water either. So that means no showers, no toilets, no brushing teeth, no washing faces until the water comes back on (unless you do it with bottled water and in your own room, which you have to do because the bathrooms smell so bad).

Mie said she finally understands what it means to be in a developing country- and I am no longer able to use the number of showers I have to take as a means to count down the days I have left. 21 days. And if the water stays in the same pattern it is now- that means I have 6 days left of running water. 6 showers. I feel sorry for the person who has to sit next to me on the plane.