water.

Today the water is flowing. The SDI office has water pipes -- for example, my bathroom has a showerhead and a regular toilet -- but water never comes out of them. Instead, there is a separate faucet outside which is usually dry. However, two or three times a week the water starts to flow. At these times we fill up all the buckets in the house so we have water for the next few days. One of these buckets is in each bathroom, used to manually flush the toilet (pouring water into the head) and bathing (pouring water onto the head).

This is enough water to bath every other day or so. It's also enough water for me to drink, after purification -- the water out of the tap is non-potable, even for the natives. People living here in Bomaka usally get water from the main quarter, Molyko. I've had a bit of this water and don't feel sick yet, but I don't want to push it, especially since I have a purifier. The purified water is good, after I figured how to use it correctly -- if you do it too much it tastes vaguely like bleach.

Instead of using the purifier, the water can also be boiled, which is done for making coffee or tea. And yesterday Turay got some Nescafe, which I drank today. Yay! I feel much happier -- kinda sad that simply drinking Nescafe can make me happy, but a $2 can of instant coffee is a pretty cheap thrill. Turay seems to be back to providing food -- today there are bananas and bread, and he's gone right now to get some vegatables -- so that's good. It also means either he's lying about not having any money or robbing people -- but at least I'm getting good food now.

I also discovered a cybercafe three buildings up from SDI -- it's the other direction from the main road, which is why I didn't know about it before. It's CFA500 for 3 hours, which is like 30 cents an hour. It's fairly fast when there aren't many people there, but with only 7 workstations it is often full. And I can't bring my own laptop, but I can use my flash drive to transfer files.

shawn.