Many of you have expressed appreciation for Stasha sharing her story. She’s been nice enough to give more in depth information of what it was REALLY like to be in an emergency situation. So today she shares with us about WATER.
MORE OF STASHA’S STORY OF LIFE IN BOSNIA DURING WAR
Before I start with the next story, I would like to say one thing. If you talk to 100 people from Bosnia you are going to hear a 100 different stories. Everyone had a differentexperience. Depending on where they lived, amount of food they already had, if they had natural resources near by. Some lost everything within first few weeks of the war, their homes, their loved ones and their lives. We were fortunate to be able to stay in our home and to live in a small town surrounded with natural resources.
I don’t think I need to do much convincing how important water is. We had a natural spring near by so we were able to get drinking water. The “only” challenge was getting there and back alive when grenades are falling from the sky. Having a good container that you can close tight and run without spilling water was very important. Having containers of any kind that you can use to store water was important in general. We needed water for washing laundry, for bathing, cooking and cleaning. Very quickly we learned to bring these things down to a bare minimum. One of the first things my parents did is move this big wood burning stove into the house. It was sitting in our backyard unused, inheritance from my grandparents, we were going to get rid of it…….oh how happy we were that we kept it. My home already had a hook up for a wood burning stove but I know that some people just simply made a hole in their wall and made it work. Wood burning stoves were in high demand. I can’t imagine having to live without electricity for a long time and not having one. Sure you can cook food in your back yard using open fire or sun oven but good luck heating up your home in the winter.
Back to water, so we used this stove to heat up water in a big stock pot and we would carry it to the bathroom add some cold water and then we used it for bathing. I used plastic pitcher to grab water from the pot, the smaller the pitcher is the better. You have to fill it up more often but when you start running out of the water it is easier to fill up small pitcher from the bottom of the pot, I guess you can have both.
Other than preparing food, washing laundry was a full time job in it self.
We changed shirts and underwear everyday but pants and towels were used few times before they were washed. Washing laundry by hands was painful. My back was killing me leaning over the bath tub all the time, and my wrists developed scabs, the skin on my palms was painful and sensitive to the touch. Underwear we boiled in a big pot on the stove with a little detergent added. This was the only way to disinfect it and yes we had a pot designated for this purpose only 🙂
Drying the laundry became a challenge too, you would think you can just use clothes line and hang it outside but the problem was since everyone in the town had some sort of fire going, and some used coal burning stoves the air was filled with sooth and if you left your laundry outside for an hour it was covered in it so we hung it above our stove inside.
Dirty dishes were kept at minimum, most meals were one pot meals, this helped us stretch the protein too. Paper plates and plastic utensils are great when electricity is out for only few days any emergency that lasts longer than a month means you have a big problem on your hands, how to dispose your trash and even though your trash becomes minimal too since you’re always thinking of different ways to reuse different packaging and there are absolutely no leftover food to be thrown away, there’s still trash.
OK, so for now I’ll live you with this image of a small town that was once beautiful and now smells like a giant beef jerky mixed with aroma of trash that is not going away. :)”
I think we often underestimate how important water really is. We installed 2 50-gallon water storage barrels on our house this spring, but I know those would go quickly during a long lasting emergency like war. You’ve inspired me to find ways to build up our water storage. Thanks again for sharing your story with us!
Everywhere out here in Saratoga, people say they have the lake water in the caase of an emergency. I am aware that it can be filtered, but there are some things we may want to think about; trasportation of the water to your home, do you have a good enough filter, and many people will be bathing in the lake. It might not be a bad idea to have some water on hand, and use the lake as a last option. I really liked the idea of the wood stove, even if you have to make a whole in your wall for ventilation. The only option we had when we built was a gas stove, which isn’t helpful with no electricity to turn it on. The winter nights would be long and unbearable without a way to keep the family warm.
What did you burn in your stove? I am very curious what you were able to use to burn for so long.
I live in the desert; wells are rare her and are thousands of feet deep. The city has taken over most of them, and they require electricity to bring up the water. We have water storage, but long-term, our city would be abanadoned. Trees do not naturally grow here, nor does much else.
I appreciate your story and I look forward to hearing more. We have lived on our food storage for many years, but it has been for economic reasons and not reasons of war; thankfully we have still had water (since it almost never rains here, we could not garden without the water that comes in). A garden–and seeds–is such an important part of your storage. I hope you share your experience with gardening as well.
In your preparation it
is very important of course to keep in mind what is it that the area you live in
will naturally provide for you and things that you will lack, in my case having
natural water spring solved a huge problem also living surrounded with forest provided fire
wood……but I do know that people, who lived in southern part which was rocky
terrain , used furniture and wooden floors, also people living in the big cities
had it really bad, even though some big cities were surrounded with trees to get to
those trees required a lot of risk and even if you did get to those trees on foot, you can carry only so
much walking for miles, so they also burned furniture and wooden floors.
I should probably make
it clear what I mean by “area you live in” because in case of emergency of any
kind we can not count on being able to get in our car and drive safely, streets
may be flooded or maybe earthquake destroyed the roads…the forest we used to
get fire wood was 5 minutes walking distance from my house, I played in this
forest as a kid…..so you really can only count on things that are within
walking distance from your home. Also some cities in Bosnia were so badly
destroyed with grenades that all the land marks were gone….this can also
happen in a big earthquake….all the things that we take for granted…..that
road sign, bank on the corner, your favorite store, house down the road from you
all gone, can you still find your way around if landscape has changed
and all those familiar signs are gone.