This story is part of our series Water at Risk, which looks at Cape Town's drought and some potential risks to the water supply facing parts of Canada and the Middle East. Read more stories in the series.



What does it say about a society when having greasy hair is considered an act of virtue? Or opting for ice cubes in your Chardonnay instead of keeping an ice bucket at your table is a gesture of conservation?

In a city like Cape Town, one of the most beautiful in the world but also one of the most unequal and one that’s facing down a profound water shortage, it means sacrifice is almost always in the eye of the beholder.

Three years of unprecedented drought have left the South African city’s rain-fed reservoirs below 25 per cent capacity. All residents, whether they live in a suburb or a shantytown, have been told to limit their consumption to less than 50 litres per person per day, or risk hastening the arrival of Day Zero, when levels become so low authorities opt to shut down the system and ration water to the city's four million residents.

Well-to-do Capetonians engaged in the conservation effort are fond of saying the water crisis has done much to pull the city together because everyone is in the same boat, albeit a grounded one.

“It’s a leveller,” says Mariehette Davel. “We’re all the same now. If there’s no water, nobody’s got water.”



Davel owns and runs a small eco-friendly hotel in the leafy suburb of Rondebosch, not far from Cape Town’s botanical gardens.



Mariehette Davel owns a small hotel in a southern suburb of Cape Town. She's taking significant steps to reduce her water consumption. (Lily Martin/CBC) Post image on Pinterest: Mariehette Davel owns a small hotel in a southern suburb of Cape Town. She's taking significant steps to reduce her water consumption. (Lily Martin/CBC)

Mariehette Davel owns a small hotel in a southern suburb of Cape Town. She's taking significant steps to reduce her water consumption. (Lily Martin/CBC)

She uses captured rainwater to wash floors, do laundry, water the plants and fill the swimming pool. Guests are asked to flush their toilets using the water left for them in buckets in their rooms.

A single flush can use up to five days’ worth of drinking water and signs in bathrooms all over Cape Town urge people: “If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.”



People tell funny tales of having to reverse months of parenting by teaching their children NOT to flush and NOT to use soap and water to wash their hands. It’s hand sanitizer or nothing.



And confused visitors to the city can sometimes be spotted emerging from restaurant bathrooms with their hands soaped up because the owners have gone to the effort of actually removing the taps.



“There are still people that shower every day,” Davel says with genuine horror. “I think it’s crazy!"



“I shower once a week when I wash my hair. For the rest I wash in a bucket every morning like most of South Africans, like most of Africa does. It’s a leveller,” she says with a smile.

But out back, workers are putting the final touches on the borehole she’s just had dug on her property at considerable expense, gambling that she’d find groundwater.

And she did.

It will essentially take her off the municipal system and give her peace of mind in terms of keeping her business going if the city doesn’t manage to stave off Day Zero.

The day was first forecast to arrive in April, but has since been pushed back several times and now sits in August. Authorities believe they can avoid it this year if drastic cuts remain in place and the rains arrive.



Drilling a borehole on your property is a potential option to avoid the worst of the water crisis — for those who can afford it. (Lily Martin/CBC) Post image on Pinterest: Drilling a borehole on your property is a potential option to avoid the worst of the water crisis — for those who can afford it. (Lily Martin/CBC)