I drink a LOT of water, and I’m grateful that there is plenty of clean well water here to drink and wash with. When I arrived in October  it was still very humid, with temperatures in the high nineties everyday. I was amazed at how much water I was drinking.

Peace Corps supplies and requires us to use our gravity ceramic filters, to insure our drinking water is safe.  Fortunately, I haven’t had any stomach issues, so I will continue to follow these guidelines. I also have a jibidaa, a clay jug to store the filtered water, which keeps it nice and cool.

The water supply in my training village was quite a distance from my compound, so I was grateful to my host family, for hauling the ten gallons I used each day to my room. Carrying my own water was the only task I used my senior citizen status to get out of performing. Actually, it would have been difficult to haul my own water, even if I wanted to, because it is the custom to assist elders in this culture. 

It’s amazing to watch these incredibly strong women carry a five gallon jug of water on their head. Most villages don’t have any irrigation pipes or ditches, so when a garden needs to be watered, it will be carried in jugs or buckets from the pump also. Even if a compound is plumbed with a faucet, the women don’t have any hoses. Basic items like wheel barrows and hoses are beyond the means of most villagers. 

Many villages now have solar operated pumps, with elevated closed storage tanks, to insure a clean supply of water. During the last decade, rural water systems have been upgraded, providing clean and safe water to most communities. This is part of the larger effort to promote national child and maternal health initiatives. 

There are still some open wells with hand pumps, but they are mainly used for watering the livestock.