Lesson 10: Water Conservation as a Necessity

I believe this is my eleventh week in the Pearl of Africa.  We’re still in the dry season, although we are all eagerly anticipating the arrival of the rains.  Various people around town speculate that the rains will come late, which means a draught and bad news bears for everybody, especially the farmers here in Uganda.  The past week, many team members had problems with their water supply.  The houses here in Senior Quarters have water tanks filled by the main line, along with one or two taps directly linked to the main line. This makes it easy to check if you have water or not.  Lack of water is a pain.  You can’t wash your hands, you can’t take a shower, you can’t even flush your toilets without a significant amount of extra work.  When the water is off, you fill jerry cans full of water wherever you can get it.  For team members, that meant visiting our school house and filling their jerry cans at our outside tap.  The teacher house is at the bottom of a hill in Senior Quarters, so we enjoy a more dependable supply of water with better water pressure.  Our waterless team members can then ration out their jerry cans for cooking, handwashing, and toilet flushing.  Other families had water flowing through the main line, but didn’t have sufficient pressure for their water tanks to be filled.  This issue could be solved by hiring someone to climb the ladder to their water tank and fill it with jerry cans by hand, or by hiring the fire department to fill their tank for them.

Of course, the mzungus have it easy compared to many Ugandans.  While taking a piki to church for choir practice, I passed a woman balancing a 20-liter jerry can full of water on her head.  It was lacking a cap, so she had stuck a banana in the opening to prevent the precious liquid from sloshing out.  She had a small child strapped to her back, and was carrying a bag over her shoulder, slowly making her way up the hill.  It is incredible what I can take for granted, both in America and living here.  I expect water to flow out of my shower head at a certain rate and at a certain temperature; anything variance and my day is off to a bad start.  Living here and seeing the hardships all around me is definitely a humbling experience.