Sri Lanka It's Happening

January 29, 2007

Water. You cannot do anything without it but getting conneced to the mains water supply in Sri Lanka is harder than finding an oasis in the desert. As with any government department they ask for all sorts of useless documents. I am not very good at getting work done at government departments anyway, so sorting out the water supply for the new house was handled by my wife and sister-in-law.

Water supply technician's toolbox. Dumped on the ground.

Finally after all the documents were gatherd, my wife went for yet another visit. On this day, there was no one to look after our 4 month old, so she took that baby with her. That had a suprising effect. The usually lethargic staff of the waterboard had suddenly become helpfull and sorted the matter then and there.

The story doesn't end there. You have to make a payment. That payment cannot be made at the water board office. You have to deposit the money into their bank account. Then you have to come back and show them the reciept! What is the bank? one of the worst banks in Sri Lanka. Bank of Ceylon (all Sri Lankan banks are horrible but this is the bottom of the barrell). My wife had to wait in line for more than 20 minutes!

All that was on thursday (the day we laid the foundation stone), finally on saturday, their technicians visited the property to connect us to the main line. Finally we have water.