Water tank warning

Water tanks are a great thing as long as you read the warning label.

You see water tanks outside of every building in Kampala; well, every building that has running water. Why here and not in Corvallis?

In Kampala, like most developing world cities, they make the difference between having water and a dry faucet. The Kampala water system doesn't operate continuously. It runs most of the time but there may be several hours a week when the pipes are dry and no water reaches your house. One of the faucets in the EMI office is plumbed directly from the city system, bypassing the storage tanks. There's a time or two every week when I turn on this faucet to fill the teapot and nothing comes out.

The water tanks for our apartment building (pictured above) save the day. They have allowed us the privilege of running water every day so far. But here's the warning label: Water tanks suggest intermittent service and unsafe water. Whenever the pipes are empty, all the leaks (and any system has them) allow who-knows-what to enter the pipe and find its way to your glass. Think twice before drinking water in a city that has water tanks.

What to do? You can buy bottled water, which is the typical approach among the expat's. You can boil your drinking water, which is the most common approach among the majority of the city's population. The second photo shows another alternative. It's a prototype of a hand-crank powered treatment unit that uses ultraviolet light to disinfect water. (Many thanks to Chris for assembling it for us.) Given enough time, the UVC rays in sunshine are quite effective in killing pathogens. This treatment unit speeds up the process so a 2.5 L batch can be disinfected in under a minute.

Could something like this take the place of boiling and bottled water? Maybe, but that's a longer story for another day.

Paul