We're on a water meter, so every drop is recorded and has to be paid for. I too do not know anyone with an air conditioner here.
In my many travels alone in West Africa, I always turned off the air conditioner in the hotel rooms in which I stayed. If you keep it on, your body never acclimatises to the higher temperature outside, so when you leave the hotel to explore a city, the heat hits you like a bomb!
In a little bed-and-breakfast type of place in Senegal, I foolishly put out a bowl of water for the little lizards and wild birds I saw in the area around the building. (The drought that year had been horrendous). The owner rushed out to berate me - she said that every snake in Abene would be heading for the compound to get at the water, and many of them are venomous. She was right - I saw many snakes while there.