Apă.

So.  Today we are working from home, sitting at our kitchen table with our laptops and books and papers, accompanied by a chorus of drills and pounding and cigarette smoke and dust.  Why, you might ask?  Well, that's a long story.

Our first week in Lupeni, there was no water in the FNO office.  No water to flush with, none to make coffee with, none to wash dirty dishes with.  The water gets turned off occasionally here, so the staff was prepared, with big gallons of water stored in jugs in the bathroom for all of those purposes.  But this time the water outage lasted a week, and we soon found out that the reason was because, according to the water company, "No one in the building pays their water bills."  FNO does pay the water bill, though, and has records to prove it.  But for some reason, our water got shut off too -- and apparently, the only solution was to install new pipes that went only to our office, so that the water company could keep track of our water usage independently.  So on our third day of work, the drilling and pounding began, disrupting the entire office and covering the bathroom and various other rooms with a thin layer of dust.  But it worked, and the water is back on in the office again, and we have our own pipes.  It seems wildly inefficient to me (and even the Romanians in our office thought it was a weird situation), and it caused a really unnecessary expense for FNO to have to put in new pipes because of the water company's disorganization or mismanagement or corruption (no one is really sure what the cause is).  But we thought it was over, and that was that.

Wrong.

Over the past three weeks, our bloc administrator has been knocking on our door periodically to come and read our water meters.  Ordinarily we report our water usage at the end of each month so he can bill the apartments in the building appropriately for their part of the building's total consumption.  But the numbers weren't adding up, and he wasn't sure what the problem was -- so he was going from apartment to apartment, reading meters to check that they were working and that no one was spinning them backwards, trying to get to the source of the problem.  Last week he told us something about a leak they'd discovered in the basement, and a day later there were men down there fixing something -- so we thought it had been fixed and the questions would be over.  But we were wrong again.

On Friday we found out that someone in our building has accused us (FNO, Americans, our apartment and all its past occupants, I'm not sure who exactly) of stealing water, cheating so as to make our consumption look lower.  So today we're at home all day, hanging out while two repairmen install new pipes that go only to our apartment.  They have to drill new holes in the walls, run new pipes all the way up from the basement (we live on the top floor), and then run them all the way from the bathroom to the kitchen (which are on opposite sides of the apartment).  It's a mess.  It smells.  It looks tacky, with all these extra pipes running along near our ceiling.  And it makes me sad... and to be honest, a little mad.

I know that under Communism, people in Romania learned not to trust their neighbors.  I know that problems of the commons like this often result in someone getting scapegoated.  I know that this apartment hasn't been permanently occupied for many years, usually only hosting semester students for a couple months in the fall and then sitting empty all spring.  I know that we're foreigners, and involved in the work of an NGO that still confuses many people in this community.  I know all this, so I'm trying not to take it too personally.  But I'm mad that there's no, well, justice, no chance for us to stick up for ourselves, no chance for us to talk with our neighbors all together and figure out what's really going on.  I'm irritated to have to pay the 544 lei to install new pipes when it's not our fault, that we're "guilty until proven innocent," that our apartment is now in shambles and covered in dust and plaster and we have to clean it all up.  I'm sad that the drilling and noise has probably annoyed and inconvenienced our neighbors all day, our neighbors who apparently don't trust us even though we really want to develop good relationships with them... or at least be respectful, cordial acquaintances.

And I (Jack now) am most sad that this accusation happened in such a secretive, roundabout way.  It's like when there's graffiti on the bathroom stall and the whole class gets a slight punishment for it, and then afterwards someone (you don't know who, it could be a few people, it could just be one classmate with a grudge from last year) tells the teacher that you did it. Or maybe not even the teacher. Maybe he told the janitor, and it somehow got over to you eventually that you're considered guilty, but you don't know who else thinks you are, because nobody's going to tell you... it sucks.
Now's our chance to see how grace covers a multitude of sins.

But hey.  (This is Kelly again.)  At least we got the chance to make coffee for the guys who came to install our pipes and chat with them about America.  And the pipes don't look so bad after all, though the styrofoam stuffing in the holes isn't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  And we got a day to munch on snacks and work from home, so I'll be thankful for that.  And I know that we don't have it bad -- at all -- so I'll stop complaining about this very small injustice, put it back in perspective, and keep smiling at our neighbors and hope and pray that slowly, slowly, we'll win them with love.