A large part of the background of every day that we're at home is getting water ready to drink. We can buy it at the store, but at about $3 a pop for bottles of water (more expensive than soda!), it's just not cost effective. This means that we end up preparing water ourselves, lest we get some rogue and random bug. Last year, 11 people died of cholera during the rainy season, and while it isn't the rainy season yet, I don't want my Muzungu self to be the first casualty this year.
This process is fairly easy and takes minimal effort, but it does have necessary paraphernalia:
Boiling is only the beginning, you see. The water has a lot of rather nasty things floating around, so we also have to filter. That being the cheapo version of a Brita here, you can imagine how long this process takes.
We also have plenty of extra filters on hand.
And let me also say that it's hard to truly appreciate how much water a person goes through a day until you have to process all that damn stuff. Last night we had soup, and much to The Husband's chagrin, we undid an entire day and a half of water boiling and filtering for some delicious potato leek.
We usually start a pot on the stove, then go about our daily activities (lately, for me, I've been in spreadsheet hell trying to manage multiple currencies) until the pot boils. We have to keep it boiling for five minutes, then let it cool down to run through the filter, then go through the whole process again.
And lest you think the filtering process might be skippable... Here's what boiled water looks like:
No, I really have no idea what those floaties are in there and why the water is that color. But I don't particularly want to ingest any of that, either. So we boil then filter, boil then filter, etc. and ad infinitum.
There are much larger scale filters that most of the ex-pats use here, but I have no idea where to find them as yet. We have to ask the landlord when we move into our permanent housing- which should be anywhere between a week or two weeks from now. We've also heard that there is treated water delivery, but you can't merely rely on Google or Yelp for such information here. It's very much word-of-mouth or finding a sign on someone's compound wall. And I haven't yet seen a wall advertising treated water deliver.
So, as I said, we boil.
I do feel the need to draw attention to one greatly amusing facet of life here - the outlets.
Perhaps it is our close proximity to Jacob Zuma that inspired these, but I can't for the life of me figure out who on earth designed such a thing and didn't have the express understanding that people would giggle every single time they saw these things. Or maybe that is precisely what the designer had in mind.
In any case, I find my amusement wherever possible. Symbolically phallic outlets never get old.
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