For four days, all Nooreshan Dilkholaust heard when he turned on a tap at his home in Clairfonds south of the Mauritian capital was the whistle of dry air.

The 50-year-old caterer banded together with his neighbors to buy 10,000 liters of water they needed to run their households, spending about about $170.

By the night of Oct. 7, they’d had enough. They took to the streets in protest as public discontent unleashed a wave of unrest that spread across the island nation of 1.3 million and tapped into grievances ranging from high living costs to changes in social spending.

The demonstrations intensified after a policeman shot and wounded a woman, and culminated on Oct. 12 in a night of looting and destruction that marked the worst upheaval in almost three decades in a country best known for its white-sand beaches.

“We didn’t expect the situation to deteriorate to that level,” said Dilkholaust, as he sat on a stool inside his small shop. “The anger was about water restrictions, not a reason to loot.”In response, the government imposed a curfew for the next six nights, as it tried to prevent the protests deterring visitors during the busiest tourist season and preserve confidence in its key financial services sector.

“We have heard your concerns, and we are working to ensure that water is distributed in such a way that every household can live with dignity during this prolonged drought,” Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam said in an Oct. 19 statement as he announced the end of the curfew.

He nevertheless described the violence as “unacceptable” and scores of Mauritians were arrested, with the curfew carrying penalties of as long as five years in jail for flouting it.

“The unrest was driven by a combination of factors that increased anti-government sentiment in recent months,” said Zoë McCathie, a country risk analyst at Cape Town-based Signal Risk.

While the country is Africa’s second-richest on a per-capita basis, the worst drought since the late 1990s has hit the island hard, with tens of thousands of people dependent on sugar-cane and vegetable cultivation, and highlighted the government’s own failures.

About 60% of piped water is lost to leaks. Replacing the aging, 1,500 kilometer (932-mile) network would cost about $850 million, Energy and Public Utilities Minister Patrick Assirvaden said this week.

That’s a big ask for a government with a debt burden of close to 90% of gross domestic product.

But neglect of upkeep of the network and a misguided focus on hard-to- implement and expensive mega-projects, such as desalination plant,s is to blame for the shortages, said Prem Saddul, who served as chairman of the state-owned Central Water Authority from 2011 to 2014.

Mauritius gets enough rain to supply it’s people and should build “mini-reservoirs and dams to hold water being lost to the sea,” he said in an interview.

For, now there’s likely to be little let up in rationing until December, when more rain is expected.

As of Oct. 19 the combined level in the seven main reservoirs was 53.6% of capacity, compared with 76.2% a year ago. Mare aux Vacoas, the biggest reservoir, is just over a third full, compared with 83% last year. Areas known for small-scale agriculture are often only provided with water every second day.

““The region hasn’t received any rain for the past 40 days,” Amarjeet Beegoo, a 47-year-old farmer, said in an interview from his 18-acre plot in Cote d’Or, near the center of the island, where he has had to cut back on planting pumpkins, carrots and other vegetables, costing him about 100,000 Mauritian rupees ($2,119) in expected revenue. “We are in a water-stress situation.” Unrest in Mauritius is unusual with the country holding peaceful elections since independence from the UK in 1968.

In February 1999, three-days of riots followed the death in custody of Joseph Reginald Topize, a popular singer known by the stage name Kaya. Churches and shops were burned and looted, and several protesters were killed in unrest that began as demonstrations demanding the legalization of cannabis, according to the US State Department.

“All what we asked was for a two-hour supply of water,” said Dilkholaust, explaining his rationale for protesting. “It was a very critical situation.”