In the middle of the Water Crisis

We are now fully into the brunt of the dry season and things could not get much worse for our poor village. The last rainy season was so much that it caused the largest of the dams to break. This has posed quite a problem for this year's dry season. The dam has completely dried up and we are all now forced to get our water from our bore holes and what little shallow wells we have. The proper demand for a bore hole is around 300 people per bore hole, we are at about 900 people/bore hole. This causes much stress for the community as some people have to jump from bore hole to bore hole to find a bore hole with enough yield to get water. WOW!! The rain could not come any sooner. We are in the process of getting funding and designing our repair for the dam so it may be ready for the rains. Kym and I are staying very busy as you might have guessed. Kym's school is finally running without her constant watch, though as with any new project it requires much attention. They now have enough teachers for her to be able to teach health lessons in each class and go back to being a health volunteer and not a preschool teacher. I am filling my days with the solving of the water problems in our community and measuring water volume of the dams in order to abate them in others. It is a very primitive process. We measure with just some rope and a stick. The rope is flagged off every 5 meters tied to the stick marked every 10th of a meter. So we stand on either end of the dam to measure the length and width and by pulling the rope taught we can measure the depth of that spot of the water. It seemed very primitive but it works. Once we know the volume we know how much abate to put in the water to kill the cyclopes that carry the guinea worm. It has been very hot and sleeping has been difficult at best. Usually Kym and I will sleep outside in hammocks to escape the heat of our apartment. But even sleeping outside we still sweat throughout the night.