It’s funny how a person can go through life not really thinking about how many daily tasks one depends on clean water for, until that clean water is no longer accessible. The residents of Ames, IA had this realization last summer, I’m sure, when the floods temporarily corrupted the water sanitation system in the city. I’ve certainly been more conscious of my water use and the cleanliness of my water since I’ve been living in South Africa, but lately I’ve been especially cognizant of the completely essential nature of clean water for living. I’ve been very fortunate in my site placement/host family placement to have water abundantly accessible where I’m living. My host family has two jojos (big giant tanks that collect rain water or hold water pumped from the ground) that collect rain water, one of which they even sanitize with some kind of water sanitation tablets. On top of this we have another jojo that holds borehole water that is pumped from the ground and even runs through an unsophisticated plumbing system we have set up in the house. Even if we didn’t have all this water accessible on the compound, there is a community tap literally right outside our gate. I’ve been able to avoid bucket bathing for nearly my entire service up to this point by taking normal baths in the bathtub in the house with hot running water- I’ve been incredibly spoiled compared to most volunteers in this matter. But about two weeks ago I started noticing a dead animal smell in the water coming out of the tap. I figured I had a sensitive nose and ignored it. The next week, however, I started noticing worms coming out of the tap. Yes, worms. Little 2-5mm long worms swimming around in my bath water. I was horrified! After a few days, they didn’t go away. I was pretty stumped as to what to do about bathing for a while and consulted with the PCMO who gave me some dewormer and suggested a sieve and offered to come look at the water. I considered pouring a little bleach in the bath water but was uncomfortable bathing in bleach on a regular basis and besides that I couldn’t find any confirmation that a small amount of bleach would actually kill the worms. I tried a sieve, but the worms were small enough they could get through it. I had been wary of talking to my gogo about it for fear of coming across as the finicky, weak American. They hadn’t mentioned anything about the worms so I thought maybe it was normal to them. I finally did ask her about it though and she said that the lid had blown off of the jojo and a bird had drowned in the water. It would seem that the drowned bird was infested with worms that then had a reproductive heyday in the water tank. So the borehole water is unusable for the time being. I decided to start taking bucket baths which really are not that bad. I use one of our zinc washing basins which is big enough that I can awkwardly sit in it. The only problem is that I have not yet figured out how to not get water all over my room. When I bucket bathed at my home stay in Ghana the family had a separate room for this task with a cement floor and a drain hole. One didn’t have to worry about keeping the water in the basin per se or about making a mess. This system seemed a lot more efficient to me. Anyway, so that’s one water source down. As I mentioned, the other jojos collect rain water. The problem with that is that it really hasn’t rained here in about two months. We’re going through a pretty severe drought in our area- it looks like winter already; all the green has turned to brown and my gogo’s crops are dying. One of our rain water jojos is reserved solely for drinking water, which I appreciate as it is the cleanest since the water is treated with the tablets. The other one we had been using for bathing, laundry, dishes, and cooking. The neighbors also came and filled up their water jugs with this water. After all this use though the water has finally been depleted. That’s two water sources down. The drinking water jojo is still pretty full since that’s all we use it for. But now I have to figure out where I will get my water for all those other tasks. I suppose I’ll just use the community tap outside the fence, something I have yet to do. I’ve thought about using the wormy water for laundry at least but for the fear of worm larvae settling into my clothes. I’ve been spoiled up to date and I suppose I still am. In a nearby community the municipality has shut down the taps and many people in rural villages across South Africa have to walk long distances to fetch their water for all purposes. Not having clean, readily accessible water definitely makes a person grateful for when it is around.
