All in the Game, Yo

Detective Bunk: So you my eyeball witness, huh?
Omar: [nods]
Bunk: So why you’d step up on this?
Omar: They trifling, basically. Kill an everyday working man and all. I mean, don’t get it twisted I do some dirt, too, but I ain’t neva put my gun on nobody who wasn’t in the game.
Bunk: A man must have a code.
Omar: ‘Pa, no doubt.

-The Wire, Season 1, Episode 7

Today I learned that even drug addicts have rules about water use.

I made this discovery in, where else, the sewers of Tijuana. All along the cemented, channelized Río Tijuana, drug users and sex workers live in the stormwater outfall pipes. Imagine the car chase scene through L.A. River in Terminator 2, sans Arnold. Mix in a bit of “Hamsterdam” from The Wire. Stir.

I've been meaning to get out there for a while. Prevecasa, the HIV-AIDS intervention/research organization that my friend Kate works with, recently started Friday soccer games among staff and canal residents to deepen their outreach program and build community.

Río Tijuana, not on its finest day

So this morning I laced up and joined Team Needle Exchange. We drove a massive RV (stuffed with staff, clean syringes, rapid-result HIV tests, Corn Nuts, condoms, and Kool-Aid) down into the canal, breaking about 100 traffic rules along the way.

Almost immediately, putrid smells of wastewater hit with gale force. We passed outfall pipes, one after another: some homes to packs of feral dogs, some just homes. Our driver laid heavy on the horn until we summoned the addicts from their sewer lairs.

Mi casa es su casa

Because if there is something all Mexicans have in common, it's love for fútbol.


Meanwhile, I had heard about the "spring" where sewer residents take water from the municipal grid. One user, I’ll call him “Bubbles” (another nod to The Wire), confirmed our hunch. “Right up the way,” he pointed, “Let’s go. I’ll take you.”


So Kate, a staffer, Bubbles the CI and I walked east along the cement riverbank to check it out. Bubbles pointed out pipes that residents had purposively plugged to stop water leaks. Counterintuitive? When I asked why, he explained that previous fugas [leaks] had attracted too much attention from a nearby neighborhood and –more significantly –the police.

A "spring" for the masses

Four men were doing laundry when we arrived at the fuga. One quickly pulled up his trousers in embarrassment: the site also serves as the neighborhood bath. I closed my eyes, and I swear, they could've been Mayan women by some creek in Guatemala. Except their veins were swollen and black. And they weren't wearing skirts.

Bubbles explained that although the leak yielded “agua limpia,” residents only used it for washing clothes and bathing. Drinking water came from more secure sources. Someone had placed a discarded car tire, weighed it down with rocks, and fuga users carefully drew from the pool to scrub their laundry and themselves. The area was relatively clean and free of trash. One man had finished clothes washing and was methodically scrubbing algae off the concrete bank, as if to say “ya no” to filth. The place felt humane.


At the heart of it all, my project is about this: the rules off the books, the codes of conduct not etched by the State, the norms beyond the text. In my case, these institutions happen to be about off-grid water use –harvesting, stealing, sharing, recycling –and the spaces they take place in, like rooftops and raingutters, washing machines and cisterns.

And the spaces they make. Like the sewer residents’ “spring” –a little slice of guts and ingenuity in a tough world.