Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-10-06 03:53 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-10-06 03:53 pm
[ SECRET POST #2104 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2104 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 129 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat x 3 (NS to begin with)], [ 1 - unreadable ], [ 1 - secret posted as text ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Live without
(Anonymous) 2012-10-07 02:48 am (UTC)(link)We also didn't have air conditioning. Air conditioning units had to be imported and unless you were a very wealthy person, you couldn't afford it. With daily highs of 30 degrees C/85 degrees F and above for four months of the year - that felt like 35/95 minimum because of the high humidity btw, it was not fun. I spent many nights awake because it was too hot to sleep.
We didn't have heating units in winter either. Again, because it had to be imported and it was expensive, only the wealthy few had one. Sure it was never below freezing but two months of the year the nightly temperatures were 10 degrees C/50 degrees F or lower. With wind howling at 15-25km/h or 9-15mph and the humidity at 80-90% and our building had no insulation to speak of whatsoever, it was fucking miserable. My mom would lay thick blankets on top of our concrete flooring for insulation - no carpets because, at 80% humidity, it'd be an invitation for mold - and everyone would huddled around a foot long incandescent lightbulb at night for warmth. We all slept together in one bed at night under two or three thick blankets because it was too cold to do so otherwise.
I was sick a lot as a kid. There was no helping it because that was how it was for everyone else too, and we lived in a major city.
My parents on the other hand grew up in rural villages without electricity or running water. Everyone lived in wooden houses with dirt floors built by their parents or their grandparents. Everyone did their washings in the nearby stream or rivers, and had to carry water from the community well for cooking. Everyone farmed in addition to whatever day job they had. Everyone preserved and dried greens for the winter months because there were no refrigerators or freezers. Everyone had chickens but only the butchers had pigs, and nobody ate meat until the end of winter. Everyone had to go out and cut wood for their stoves for cooking and for heat. In winter, everyone went to bed hungry at least once per week. There were no toilets so everyone had to bare their asses to the elements in their outhouses - which was and still is usually a deep pit with two planks and two walls - even in the deep of winter.
Last year, some of my parents' acquaintances and their kids went to visit their parents and grandparents in villages like my parents', except better and more modern. The kids came back complaining about how everything was dirty and there was no internet and the toilets were all squat toilets and how everything was just plain wrong. I think they needed a reality check because the things they take for granted like paved roads and flush toilets are not things most of the world have.
tl;dr - while I don't remember living without electricity or running water or food for extended periods of time, I didn't exactly have an easy childhood. My parents grew up without electricity or running water and had to live through starvation but that was how things were like everyone else back then. People who judge you because the things they take for granted were not available to you are jerks and morons. Also, you should tell them it's useless to shower everyday in some places because of environmental reasons - like how someplace dry and dusty will leave you grimy again within an hour - and take pleasure in their faces of disgust.