Gavdos Island: Extreme Water Conservation

One of the first lessons I learned about how to survive on Gavdos in 1990 was that water was just as precious as the air we were breathing. I accompanied my Greek boyfriend to this island to make his life easier while he worked as the island's doctor. Little did we know what was in store for us when we agreed to spend the next 6 months living there. The island of Gavdos is the southernmost point of Greece and Europe, but with few modern conveniences, it is the least popular island in Greece. This is definitely a case of "out of sight, out of mind".

There was no plumbing whatsoever on this island, but I would've been happy to put a plumber to work! There was no underground water source, although that didn't stop mainland companies from coming to the island to dynamite and drill in different locations. There was government money set aside for this, and the drilling companies weren't about to see it go to waste.

The sole source of water on the island came from rain. Located closer to North Africa than Europe, the rains were few and far between. Each home on the island had its own system of water collection and underground cisterns. There were also cisterns in various places to collect water for the livestock that roamed freely and gathered on hot afternoons in the shade from our house. The cisterns were primitive, but they worked. Where possible, the natural lay of the land would be used to divert water to them. These were simply large holes in the rocky ground that had been lined with a cement coating like a swimming pool, then given a coating of whitewash to keep it as sanitary as possible. A chunk of lime (the mineral, not the fruit) and some halved and squeezed lemons would be tossed into the water to kill bugs and bacteria. We drank this water and never got sick, so it seemed to do the trick. A wooden cover was fitted over the cistern hole and most people kept a rope tied to that for lowering down their bucket to get water as needed.

When it looked like rain was approaching, everyone was out clearing debris from the rain gutters that had been cut into the rock, or the cement gutters that had been built to collect as much water as possible from the largest area possible. Empty bowls, buckets and assorted receptacles were also set out to collect rain water. Literally ever drop counted!

The most difficult water-related issue for us was bathing. Since there was no bathroom, we took turns standing in a round plastic laundry tub helping each other soap up and then carefully rinse off using as little water as possible. We got quite good as this and after a while we hardly splashed a drop outside of the tub onto the cement floor. After making a deal with the locals for the Doc to stay on over the winter of 1991, an outhouse with a real toilet bowl was built several yards from the doctor's residence. We were able to use the water from bathing to flush the toilet. Even dirty bath water was used sparingly. Washing hair could be done with just a couple cups of water, and was something I had to have done, water shortage or not! I would give up drinking water in order to have it for my hair.

We found that some people who lived near the sea did their bathing there. They used the green bars of soap made from the bi-products of olive oil production and washed with salt water. They would use about a cup of fresh water to carefully rinse from head to toe when they emerged from the sea. I always wondered if that might've been bad for the marine ecosystem, but understood that making comments would only cause bad will. We were, afterall, temporary inhabitants of their island.

Likely Page BreakThe next most urgent water issue had to do with laundry. We did our best to wear clothes as long as possible without tossing them in the pile to be washed. Actually, they just stood around the room rather than lying limply on the floor. Gavdos was hot, dry, dusty, and had a shortage of trees and greenery. Sweating was not optional.

There were a few trees and bushes near our house, and before the outhouse was built, they were only for business purposes, not for enjoying their shade! When the bushes lost their leaves, there wasn't much privacy, and we found out many months after moving there that a favorite pasttime of the locals was to sit with a pair of binoculars and, um... bird watch. I had long since lost my modesty, so it didn't bother me as much as it might've in our earlier days on the island.

Besides watching birds and other things with binoculars, the locals kept an eye on us to monitor our water consumption. They watched for clean laundry hanging on a line outside the house. They watched how many trips I made up to our cistern with the bucket. There was nothing we did that was private. Nothing. The house had no glass in the windows, but did have shutters that could be latched from the inside. It didn't matter if they were closed securely, since there was no lock on the front or back doors. They were just boards nailed together with a metal latch to keep the wind from blowing them open. Whatever valuables we had, we kept in the doctor's office which had a proper door and locked with a key.

To make my point about how well our water usage was monitored, I'll have to admit that the lone island policeman paid me a visit early one morning to let me know I was bathing too often. He insisted that bathing was unnecessary and that I only needed a few drops of water to wash my eyes each morning. He even demonstrated, without using water, how this should be done.

Doc happened to be out visiting a patient and I was at the office alone when the policeman caught me taking out the tub with a few inches of water in it. We had only been there a few days and were feeling the disastrous results of two adults sleeping together in a twin bed. The lack of any modern day luxuries, such as water and electricity, along with sleep deprivation, had taken its toll on me. I burst into tears and washed my face that way for the nice policeman! Word spread fast that I had been upset and the policeman caught heck from the locals. They knew if I packed it up and left, their new doctor would be leaving, too. It would be a while before either of us got another lecture on water conservation.

One of the easier things to adapt to was replacing water with other drinks, which seemed to leave only alcoholic beverages. We went through an awful lot of Henninger beer in liter bottles, a local wine known as retsina in bottles with metal caps instead of corks, and various kinds of wine of unknown origin in plastic water bottles. I never understood how it could be such a problem to get food from Crete, but there was never a shortage of beer, wine or cognac! Obviously these things were higher on the priority list than spam and spaghetti.

Once we gave in to the local way of life, everything became much easier. I wouldn't say it was healthier, but with no bathing, laundry, or cleaning to be done, there was a lot more time to have fun and explore the island and its beauty. That was one thing there would never be a shortage of.