I thought I’d share with you a “daily living in Africa” reality. Before we moved here it was hard to grasp the concept of what life was really like here. So since we have this big pond between us, I figured I’d try to share some of our differences in daily living.
Today’s Difference: Water!
Water is pumped at nights here into our (now) two storage tanks.
John may not look like he was working in this picture, but it’s not an accurate representation AT ALL. Hehe. John walked Matt through installing and connecting our second water storage tank in a morning-long project.
If the power goes out for a day, then water is not pumped to our house from the street and we can only use our reserves for 2 days/1 night until the following night when the city pumps water again.
Once we get it pumped into the house from our storage tanks (using electricity to pump it to the house), we have to take it from the faucet and put it into two filtration tanks before we can drink it/brush our teeth with it.
On a side note: Teaching kids to use bottled water to brush their teeth instead of sink water was a learning curve! We refill the water bottle with filtered water every few days as we go through it.
Thank you, to my two eldest for their demonstration skills. 😉
When the power goes out, our water cannot be pumped to the house so we have to go to the storage tanks, stand on a stool and remove the water from the tops of the tanks with a bucket.
Then we can bring it into the house to pour in the back of the toilet to flush toilets, pour in the sink to wash dishes, use it to wash our hands, or pour it into the filter tanks to filter drinking water. Needless to say, it’s hard work, but certainly worth it. So when the power goes out around here, many things kind of shut down a bit while we all adjust to “village living”, drawing our water from our happy little river AKA storage tank. 😉
-Clean, pumped water is an utter privilege.
-Thankful, grateful and blessed despite the extra effort.
Wow! So many things I take for granted. I wonder how much water I actually use in a normal day. It must be amazing to watch the levels go down and see how much is “normal.” I’m glad you were able to get a second tank so you can ration more appropriately for your family size when the power goes out.
I’m thankful to have the reserves too should the power go out for longer than a day. We have certainly become more water conscious even with the reserves.