Water Works

Since Sierra Leone is close to the equator, the number of daylight hours and average temperatures are fairly constant.  We get sunshine from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.  The temperature generally ranges from a low of 70 degrees in the morning to 90 degrees in the late afternoon.  What is not constant is the rainfall.  One can expect rain every day in July and August, but not a drop in January and February.  Now, in the heart of the dry season, water is a scarcer commodity.

It is easy to take water for granted in the States.  Turn on the tap and clean, potable water comes flowing out.  In Kenema one must work for water.  The work begins at the well.  We are fortunate; our well is close by and has a pump.  Seventy stokes later a 2.5 gallon bucket is full.  Other wells require the hand over hand hauling of a rope attached to a plastic jug that has been dropped deep into the abyss.  It’s fun the first few times, a chore for any more.  Our pump has a squeak, so it is easy for me to tell from our house 80 yards away when the pump is in use.  Lately, it has been squeaking consistently during the day as other wells in the area go dry or are locked up by their private owners.  Theoretically our well is intended just for university use, but it is also used by many people in the neighborhood.

Well etiquette requires that older people not pump water.  If there are others at our well when I arrive, someone will invariably offer to pump the water for me. Children are taught at a very young age that pumping and carrying water is something that they should be doing once they reach a certain age, usually about 10. Sometimes, I say that I am trying to get some exercise, but most of the time I will let them, child or grown-up, pump, because they feel it is the appropriate thing to do in this culture. I try to go to the well when people are not around to avoid this situation.  During the work week, the caretaker of our guest house, Veronique, sees that it is part of her duties to get water for us.  Sometimes she enlists one of her daughters do the chore.  Their help is very much appreciated.

Water Filters

I estimate that we use about 10 gallons of water a day, twice that much when we do wash.  That’s two trips to the well carrying two buckets each time.  I will never master the popular head-carrying technique, but the five gallons distributed equally between my two arms is manageable.  Once I make it to the house, the water mainly goes into two 60 gallon blue barrels that store our toilet, bathing, and brooking (clothes-washing) water.  The rest of the water is saved in one bucket for washing dishes and in another for putting into our filters for drinking.  When the two blue barrels are almost filled to capacity, I feel a sense of security.  I figure if our well ever went dry, we could make it about 20 days with cautious use of water resources.  I hope that day will never come.  Veronique says that our well has never gone dry, but it concerns me that security is locking it up occasionally now.






Our Bucket Collection

If I were an investor in the Sierra Leone economy, I would be tempted to put my money into the plastic bucket/tub business.  Buckets are used here for so many things besides carrying water.  The vendors that walk the streets need them to carry their wares.  They are necessary for washing clothes.  People use them to take baths and because we have the luxury of an indoor toilet, we need a bucket for the water that flushes it. Most buckets in Salone are two-toned, colored with distinctive stripes.  This coloring scheme was one of the first things that I noticed when I arrived in this country.  Our brooking tub is a good example of this coloration.  Washing clothes by hand is a real ordeal which doesn’t always produce the results that reflect the work that one does.  There are washboards and plunger type mechanisms that could help the process, but Ann and I (mostly Ann) do it the old-fashion way of just soaking the clothes in the tub first, then scrubbing out the sweat and dirt in imitation of a washing machine agitator for as long as we have the energy.  Two rinses are done with the help of additional buckets. Sundays are major brooking days. Drying the clothes on the line is no problem this time of the year.

Why isn't Don in this picture?

Preparing drinking water is a two-step process for us.  We put well water into each of two three-liter filters supplied by the Peace Corps.  This first step takes out most contaminants.  The second step is to add a bit of chlorine bleach to kill any remaining microbes that slip through the filters.  Concerned a bit about drinking this lightly chlorinated water, Ann and I have mostly used an alternative, boiling the filtered water.  We use the chlorinated water for rinsing dishes and brushing our teeth.  We make our coffee and tea with the boiled water.  Most Sierra Leoneans will buy their drinking water in 500 ml plastic packs which can be purchased all over town.  Seven cents will quench your thirst.  The cost can be cut in half by buying a 20 bag pack.  We like to throw our packs into the refrigerator or freezer as there's nothing quite as refreshing as an ice cold pack of water on a hot Sierra Leone day.  These days we are drinking plenty of those.

Water bags serve as ice blocks for the frig when frozen.