WATER WATER EVERYWHERE…. EXCEPT HERE

It’s a funny thing how priorities can change from one week to the next. A couple of weeks ago, the power went on and off every so often, so when it went off, we were all annoyed, sighing loudly, feeling disrupted. Now that we have power so rarely, we get really excited when it IS working! Yesterday we lost power around 8am and it didn’t come back until sometime in early hours of the morning, so effectively we had no power for a full day. We use the generator in the office until 6pm but after that, it’s lights out and candles on.

But that pales in comparison to our current problem – we have had no water for almost three days now. The pipe which brings water into our village is blocked somewhere along the line, so we aren’t getting water at all. There’s no water to drink, to wash in and we’re running out of water to cook with. As I used a miniscule amount of my drinking water to wash my hands with, I realized how much more respect I had for it, now that it was scarce. Of course, if everyone had that much respect for water while we had it, Tanzania wouldn’t be facing a drought situation. That’s not to say that issues like the ever-changing climate and global warming haven’t caused this problem, but with so little water, the little that exists has to be used carefully.

When the water shortage began to become apparent around a year ago the government should have been implementing the restrictions that are currently in place. But it was an election year and drought isn’t really a word that a future government wants to use. So it was pushed to the rear of everyone’s minds – something to be dealt with at some time in the future.

And now the water is running out.