We get water delivered to our apartment in Amman. It's not that the drinking water isn't safe when it is delivered to the houses, it's that it's held in a tank on the roof all week, and you never know how clean or unclean the tanks are. It's fine for washing, showering, and brushing of teeth, but it's a better idea to buy purified water for drinking. Also it tastes like metal. (I think one day a few years ago, there was a mix up and the water delivery trucks accidentally delivered water meant for irrigation instead of drinking water to people's houses. Basically, people used to drink their tap water, but one day it turned brown, and they stopped.)
When we run out of water, which we pump out of the several-gallons-large plastic barrel tank with a plastic water pump, we call the water delivery guy one street over. If we're lucky, he delivers that afternoon. We have a little coupon book that we paid for ahead of time, and we put out the empty barrel with one coupon, and he exchanges the empty one for a full one, just like a milk man.
Much to our dismay, our water pump broke this week. So I called for water and tried to eplain that we needed a new pump as well. I had looked up the word for pump but was not entirely sure how to pronounce it. Our conversation went something like this:
me: We need a new pump, too.
water guy: A what?
me: A water pump.
wg: A what? You need a notebook?
me: Pump! Pump! You know the thing that pumps on top of the water?
wg: Ohhhhhh a PUMP!
me: Yes.
wg: We don't have any now, but we can get you one after a week.
(note: in arabic, pump is muDakha and notebook is daftar.)
