The Third Continent

During my improved stove project I told participating families that I'd give them some fabulous seeds (spinach and various other veggies) if I visited their houses and encountered what Peace Corps peeps fondly call 'tippy taps' and almost every one of my 30 families made one (and are using it!).

http://www.tippytap.org/



The needs for these tippy taps came from the horrifyingly high incidence of parasitic infections that my community members have from not consuming clean water and terrible diarrhea from lack of handwashing. All this talk about water got me thinking though about how a few days every month I wake up to no water in my house....this sets my day off to a very bad start for several reasons...

I can't brush my teeth or wash my face-the only real versions of hygiene left that make me feel dignified.
I can't flush the "toilet" and neither can the other 5 people who use it
I can't boil water to drink for the day.
....or for my coffee.
I can't clean out my pee bucket.
I can't stop thinking about my parasite thats just gonna keep growing because my host mom is washing dishes with water from the night before thats she's already used twice.
I can't wash my hands and neither can she.

Of course the solution is to always have a bucket of standing h20 just ready to go,and I've taught moms about purifying water with a drop of bleach per liter, boiling for at least 5 mins, or SODIs....but sometimes my mind drifts off to drinking from the tap back home or how I can pick either crushed or cubed ice from the refrigerator dispenser. I think about how in the US I never asked questions about infrastructure or where things come from or how they go organized so well. I can't ever recall not having any water for a prolonged period of time.

A few weeks ago I went with a close Peruvian friend for her baby ultrasound in the local hospital. I went to the bathroom there and there was muck on the floor and no water and no soap to wash my hands. I wasn't that surprised but said'you'd think that at least the hospital would have soap' but she said 'they try, but then people just take it.'Then I want to create an NGO solely for the purpose of soap dispenser installation!!!!

Hmmm.