The Guatemalan Mudslide | Or: Submerged Lands in Steglitz

After my significant other spent last night gazing into the sky on the balcony with a hand-held fan (he was waiting for a refreshing thunderstorm that never came), I myself was awakened at about 2.31 a.m. by a noise that sounded like a fast-flowing stream. I stumbled to the window – and saw water, loads of water, vast quantities of water. But it wasn't coming from above. It was coming from the ground. A burst pipe, right under our bedroom window!

While gazing at the wild water stream run down what used to be our street, I sleepily realized that we had constantly been dealing with the element of water in the past couple of weeks. In May, it had been air, balloons and paper streams. In June, it was wet clothes (because of the hourly thunderstorms), followed by trips to the public pool and surrounding lakes in July. But to our three year-old, water isn't just water, much less an “element”. To him, water is a suspense-packed experiment, a fascinating endeavour, a neverending challenge. Water comes in hundreds of shapes and on all kinds of occasions. Water comes out of the lawn sprinkler, water is in water ice, water is in our toilet bowl.

The highlight of every (well-thought out and popular) inner-city playground in the summer is a water pump. Kids pump, squirt and paddle around like crazy. They forget everything around them as they construct highly complex canals, dams and waterways, jump into puddles of mud, fill up balloons with water and battle each other with water guns, regardless of the consequences.

Many people may hate water pumps because they're so damn loud, but to me, they're what keeps my kids occupied while I can sit around in the shade for hours and peacefully socialize with other mothers – as long as I remember to keep the proper water-squirting distance. The unpleasant part of a hot day usually sets in after the day at the playground, when I try to get my overtired, hungry, sweaty son under the shower. This is where the mud-resistant fireworker turns into an aquaphobic Struwwelpeter that refuses to get his hair washed. The only trick that works is a Foam-maker like the one I recently bought from Tchibo.

After about three a.m. This morning, the fire brigade finally arrived after we called them twice and managed to convince them that, yes, this was really an emergency. “No, it's not just an overflowing drain!! Our street looks like it's been hit by a Guatemalan mudslide!”  Finally, the police, the Technische Hilfswerk, the Berliner Wasserbetriebe and – at around 4 a.m. - a towing truck arrived. At this point, getting back to sleep was pretty much out of the question. While one neighbor yelled that the asphalt was already declining and the voyeuristic couple on the first floor uttered the apprehension that all of our basements were probably flooded by now, our son was having the time of his life, what with all the sirens and gigantic cars. I left him to wallow in excitement, but I for my part had seen enough. After spending half the night in the flood on our street, I exhaustedly stepped into the shower at about 5.30. But when I tried to turn on the water: nada, nothing, niente. The department of public works had shut off our water supply.

(sjb)