day 20

Since recently many tears have been shed, I'd like to talk about water and related services.

Here almost every house has no running water and people must fetch it from one of the town wells by paying the water keepers. Unless, like today, all  the wells are dry. So the only way is a walk into the jungle to a muddy pond. Then they store it in plastic barrels at home (the same operation is done almost every day). This water is not drinkable for foreigners unless we boil it first (like for the daily cup of Lipton yellow label tea in the morning). The water we drink instead is sterilized and stored into small plastic sachet: you cut a corner with your teeth and drink it. If you're lucky, the taste is acceptable. But drinking is not the only use for water. Peeing is, however, easy: you do it anywhere you want or, in the case of the school, in the urinal. There are two, a male and female one, but the second one is used as a "shower". The water must be taken from the barrel with a bucket using then a small cup to wash yourself. There is never any choice about the temperature though. 

If you need to go to the toilet, you have two choices: the bushes or the town toilet, paying the toilet guardian (how clean do you think it could be?), where it's even possible to flush the water. He also provides you with the toilet paper: one "soft" page of a newspaper (don't ask me why these pages are written in an Eastern Europe language). Do I then wash my hands? Sure, but to do so I have to go back to the school. I even try to wash my hands before eating (simply pouring some water on them with a cup). However, the kids don't and they eat without cutlery.

The same with clothes: two buckets, first one to soap them, second to rewash them. Afterwards, they never seem clean, at least not with my washing skills.

So here water is not something taken for granted nor so accessible to everybody. For example, farmers here don't irrigate fields during the dry season (now), forcing them to choose just some simple and native cultivation techniques.

There could be many solutions, but like always they need money.