Water, water everywhere... ?

I wasn’t going to relay this story for reasons that will become obvious later, and to spare those of you of a squeamish disposition, certain lavatorial details. However, it’s just too good a story not to recount, so sit back and enjoy.
A few days back we ‘celebrated’ a whole month without running water. As well as the queuing for water at the local stand-pipe, blanket baths, and emptying bath, dish and laundry water into the cistern to flush the toilet, we now have to leave the flat to have a shower, do our washing and eat... it being hard to wash-up after cooking. Unfortunately the VSO office here have been decidedly unhelpful even to the point that they won’t allow one of the two drivers they have (who are redundant most of the day) from ferrying us to and from the flat to collect water.
There are however a couple of solutions to our predicament, unfortunately, both are rather expensive. We can either get an expensive, giant sized, water tank put onto our roof or a cheaper, baby sized, one put into our kitchen. Then when they are empty we pay someone to drive a tanker full of water round and fill them up. We have yet to decide on either option and all the while Mike is showering at work and we both go to the toilet anywhere but in the flat.
Then just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse events took an unexpected turn. After exactly a month of living under conditions of near depravity I happened to strike up a conversation with a neighbour whilst outside, once again, queuing for water. She expressed her surprise that I was there at all, when after all our flat already had a water tank. She even took me around to the back of the block to show me the tank which positively overflowing with the precious liquid. She went on to explain that there was a pump that should get the water up to the flat and that as we weren’t getting anything, there must be a problem with it. Buoyed with the news and the belief that we only needed to repair the pump or at the very worst have it replaced to have water again... and anyway it was a lot cheaper than having the whole system installed as new, I went in search of the pump. I searched the whole flat and eventually found the switch (which was the ONLY switch in the bathroom) and convinced that with all my DIY skills I could fix the problem myself, I flicked the switch.
Immediately water gushed from the shower. After a full month of no running water, showering at friends or work, eating on the street and peeing in open sewers or the roadside to avoid stinking out our bathrooms with the smell of stale urine... we were only without water, not because it was broken, but because we hadn’t realised that the bloody pump was turned OFF !!!!
The humiliation and embarrassment of having to admit this story to everyone we’d complained to over the past month was more than washed away by a decent shower. Still, I can’t help but wonder how different things would have been if only someone had asked... Oh! so what’s this switch for then? I suppose you just live and learn...