Water
Water is necessary for sustaining all forms of life. Back home water is something I rarely have to
worry about, except for the summer drought and dying grass. At home I can always turn on the faucet and
there is guaranteed good water for drinking, bathing, and everything else I
need it for. In Mozambique it is a
different story. When we first got to
Maputo our contact said, “If anyone needs to take a shower now would be a good
time because the water is running.” Shouldn’t the water always be running? Not in Mozambique. Here the water
usually only runs from midnight until ten in the morning and when its running
we are filling up every bucket we can find and the line for the shower goes all
the way down the hall. Sometimes the
water decides to run sporadically on and off throughout the day. When it does run it looks nasty and it
definitely isn’t safe to drink. It’s
usually a brown/green color filled with sediment and sand. In order to drink it we have to filter out
the sand and sediment then boil it for 20 minutes- then it’s safe to drink.
Not only is running water a problem in Mozambique but also
too much or the lack of water. When we
first got to Mozambique the teams in the northern part of the country were told
that they couldn’t shower this month because there was a serious drought and
all the water that was in the well was reserved for the toilet and
cooking. It’s a good think World Racers
usually have a stockpile of baby wipes.
For us we in the south we had too much water. For 4 days we were stuck inside because of
Tropical Storm Dando. I’ve never seen it
rain so hard in my life. We would wake
up in the middle of the night getting soaked from water coming from the walls,
windows, and roof. The city also
experienced flooding because Maputo doesn’t have a drainage system. All the water that falls eventually makes it
out to sea and for Maputo it has to go right through the heart of the
city. In 2000 southern Mozambique
experienced extreme flooding that killed almost 1,000 people. We had so much water in the 4 days that one
of the septic tanks on our property overfilled and we now have puddles of sewage
water all over the place. After our
first day of rain the puddles were filled with hundreds of frogs mating and now
there are thousands to tadpoles swimming in the same puddles that have yet to
dry up.
Because of all the rain we started our ministry a week
later. This month we are working at a
home for boys- teaching and just hanging out with them. During the Christmas break the boys went back
to the bush and because of the rain they couldn’t get back to Maputo in time to
start classes so our contact delayed the start of school for a week. Today we started classes even though 2 of the
boys are still stuck in the bush.
And with all the rain and standing puddles of water the mosquito
population has significantly increased and with that so has our risk for
Malaria.
