showers of wasting

I live in a tourist town.

Whenever I travel to Mexico's highlands, people ask me where I live in Mexico. My former answer of "Melaque" (when I lived there) would often get no reaction. But, when I now say "Barra de Navidad," the recognition is immediate.

For good reason. Barra de Navidad has long been a beach destination for Mexicans. When my  brother and I drove down to Melaque in 2009, in my pre-GPS days, we wended our way through Puerto Vallarta with very little trouble until we  came to the southern edge of its old town. The traffic signs simply dried up in helping us to make choices.

We were about to stop and ask for directions when I saw a sign telling us to turn right, not for "Melaque," but for "Barra de Navidad." Because Melaque had a larger population, I thought that was what we would see on the signs. But Barra de Navidad was the spot travelers were headed.

My little village pays a price for its tourist reputation. When the family who seized the land in Barra de Navidad to build a housing area for tourists, they devised a community that was markedly seasonal. Paved streets. Canals. Modest, but comfortable homes. But all designed for people who would come and go throughout the year.

Some people have moved here permanently. I am one. And, of course, the people of Barra de Navidad live here all year. But a lot of houses sit unoccupied and untended for months at a time. In some cases, for years.

The house across the street from mine falls into that second category. In the five years I have lived here, I have never seen the owners. I don't think.

There have been a couple of visitors. But they appeared to be very unfamiliar with the house. I assumed they were renters.

This past week, four identical white pickups showed up. I would not have paid much notice if they had not blocked access to my garage. Well, that is not quite true. I noticed their presence because every night when they returned to the house, they would dump plastic debris (bottles, cups, forks) in the middle of the street.

Then the visitors were gone. All except for one pickup that remained parked in the garage.

Around noon yesterday I heard rain. Or I thought it was rain. When our downpours begin, the most characteristic sound here is the fire-hose blasts of water that jet off roofs through downspouts into the street.

But the sky was clear. What sounded like rain was simply water pouring out of the downspouts on the house across the street.

It was easy to deduce the cause. Most houses here have water storage tanks on the top of the house to provide gravity-powered water pressure inside the house. The water is pumped from the street to the roof. When the tank is full, a switch stops the pump. If the switch is functioning properly.

My neighbor's switch isn't. As a result, water is pumped to the tank, the tank runs over, and the street in front of the house turns into something resembling a canal in Amsterdam -- with none of the attendant tourist appeal.

It is not really a problem other than the grotesque waste of water in an area that is short of it. The water will settle into our sandy soil. The biggest cost the owner of the house will face is the wasted electricity. If that pump continues to run, the owner's cost for electricity may increase.

If this was happening to any of the other houses in our neighborhood, the switch would have been turned off yesterday. The reason is simple. I either know my neighbors who live here all year or I know how to contact those who live here only part-time.

I asked my neighbors if they knew who owned the house or how to contact a caretaker. They had no idea. I checked with my handyman and the guy who cleans my pool. They had no idea.

Sometimes, it is great to get away from everything at the beach and to go somewhere no one knows you. But that luxury comes at a price.

So, here I sit listening to the faux rain -- when we actually need the real thing -- and thinking about Jesus' admonition to give water to the thirsty. How often does my ability to do that end up as wasted as the water now flowing into the street?