Water

There are several wells throughout the two villages, because this is all people had for drinking water for a long time. To get water from the well, you just drop a bucket down the hole, dangle it, and then pull the rope back up. This is actually one of my favorite activities, but I can see how a full life of it would get pretty tiring. There is now one hand pump and the school, so you literally just crank a big lever and set your bucket under the tap. But, the pride of the community is actually a project that the volunteer before me did. It’s a solar powered pump, and storage tank that sits about twenty feet off the ground. Twice a day the tank will fill, and then it will go out to three taps in old Sami, and at least one tap in new Sami. I don’t get my water there so I actually don’t know how many they have. When the pumps turn on all of the women, will grab their big pans and their bidongs- twenty liter jugs that cooking oil is sold in- and fill up all of the containers they can. They will just keep making trips from the pump to home until the pump is turned off. I have three bidongs, so I generally fill up two of them each day and carry them back to my hut one in each hand. Everyone else is stronger with their head so they just carry pans up there. When they get home they put the drinking water in a big clay pot called a jibida, which helps keep it cool. Other than drinking water, you need water for bathing. Water for watering your garden in your backyard. The kitchen always needs water for cooking. The donkeys and cows need water. Then you need some water for washing dishes after meals. If the pump turns off before you have water for all of these things its okay, because you can just go to a well and pull some up any time of day. Some people actually prefer drinking well water because they think its cooler, and don’t like water that has been run through the holding tank. For me at least its safer to drink water that comes straight from the ground. When women do laundry they also use a lot of water, Instead of bringing it all home, they will just do laundry right next to a well, making laundry time and pump time also a pretty fun social time.