I have heard that people appreciated the techie blog on the internet provision, so I thought I would add to the series by describing the water provision.
In our understanding of the word I guess there is not really running water here. There are two places where water is supplied from. The first is for the the site as a whole. Water is pumped from a bore hole down into the valley to the highest point on the site. Here it is stored in a water house where it is processed and treated. There is a constant flow of kids to and from this water house with the ubiquitous Ugandan yellow containers [many which leak!] taking the clean water back to their family groups. This water is also used by the Browns [although they feed into the local economy by getting someone to collect it for them!]. They use it for drinking and cooking with - although not as it is. They poor it into a chalk based filter system before they drink it. This is a little annoying as the tape on the filter keeps breaking and the replacement have to come from Kampala - a challenging drive away. I think 3 have broken since I have been here.
The second source of water is what Steve likes to call 'harvesting rainwater'. The water that comes down the drainpipes is directed into a cistern under the veranda. The cistern is around 25,000 litres [we think]. All the family groups have one of these, but only a small proportion of them work. This is what Community Church Northampton gave money to fix when the Browns first moved out here. Those family groups with a working cistern access the water by dropping a bucket down through an access hatch. The Browns are have it a little more sophisticated. They have an electric pump that pumps the water to a tank on a tower by the side of the house. The taps, shower and toilet in the house are fed by this tank. Hence the water is only 'hot' if the sun has been particularly strong that day!! The other complication here however is that electric power is intermittent. Hence we have had a number of times in our stay the situation where the tank on the tower is empty and there is no power for the electric pump to refill it. Hence then no shower, no toilet flushing, nothing in the taps. Added to this [and this one is for Mark Hill to sort] when this happens the shower refuses to work for a while because of an airlock in the system somewhere!!
So there you are, does that class as 'running water'?
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1 comment:
Wow! makes you appreciate how easy we have it just turning on a tap.We had a taste of having to fetch water when camping which is ok for a week. Quite something to live like that all the time.
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