Amazi mu Rwanda

Muraho buri wese! Mumeze mute (how are you)? Another month has passed, and another blog is here. This month, by request, the subject is amazi, water, specifically the storage of water and how there's enough to go around, especially during the long dry season (which we are currently in). First of all, I can only give you a perspective from my little village in the South of Rwanda, and it may not be the same as situations elsewhere, but here's how it looks down here.

Around my village, and other nearby villages, there are several public wells. These are marked by large concrete slabs that look like a tombstone with a plastic pipe running out of them and a concrete gutter underneath to catch spilled water and prevent a new ravine from being formed near the well. During the rainy season, there seems to be water pouring out of these wells non-stop, being funnelled into recycled vegetable oil jerry cans (oil is used extensively in cooking here) with the help of half of an old water bottle. Whether someone is actually there to collect the water or not, it's flowing. During the dry season, however, I've noticed that things are different. The wells are only operating at certain times, and there are long lines of people, up to 30 or 40 people long, waiting patiently with their yellow jerry cans to collect there water so that they can wash clothes, bathe, and cook. The water, from what I've been told costs between 30 and 50 Rwandan francs (RWF) per 20-liter jerry can (recall that $1 is equivalent to 600 RWF).

The reason I say that I've been told is that, in addition to the public wells, some houses have wells. My house is not one of them, but one of our neighbors does have a well, and she happens to be a teacher at the school, so we get our water from her and pay a flat rate each month (around 2000 RWF). The private wells are somewhat different from the public ones. Instead of a large tombstone-like structure, they are simply a metal pipe poking up out of the ground with a handle on top to turn the faucet on or off, much like the wells up at Beartrap Meadow on Casper Mountain for those of you who are familiar with the area. Usually our house worker, Louise, (who cooks and cleans for us) avoma amazi, fetches the water, but I have my own jerry can that I use to fill up my water filter and so I fetch water every other week or so. It's a simple process, and the hardest part is lugging the 20 liter jerry can the 400 meters or so from the well back home.

Of course, wells are not the only option for getting water; there's also the collection of rain water. At the school, at the market in Musha (where the district office is located), and at the health center in Musha, there are huge containers to connected to the gutters on the roofs to collect rain water and store it for future use. The ones at the school are black, plastic 500-liter containers, and the ones at the market are made of stones and are probably twice as big. So, during the rainy season, these places have water just about whenever they need it. All they have to do is turn the spigot on the metal pipe protruding from the bottom and they can fill their jerry cans with ease. I know a couple of Peace Corps Volunteers who bought smaller water storage containers, and they have told me that it really helps and that they don't have to fetch much water during the rainy season. During the dry season, however, there's not much water to collect, so they're forced to fetch it with the rest of us.

Now, once water has been fetched, it has to be treated before it can be drunk. Like I said, I have a filter, provided to me by the Peace Corps, and so I filter my water and bleach it before drinking it. The other alternative (and by far the most popular) is to boil the water, and if you are looking for water to drink in Rwanda and don't want the bottled stuff, you ask for amazi atetse, literally 'cooked water'.

But, what happens during the dry season? Is there always water in the wells? Well, the answer is no. Sometimes the water stops flowing. I've been stopped several times on my way to the neighbor's house, jerry can in hand, by a couple of kids saying, “amazi yakamye”, “the water's stopped flowing”, and I had to turn back with a still-empty jerry can. Now, this has happened both during the rainy season and during the dry season, so sometimes it's just a problem with the well that has nothing whatsoever to do with the water level, but there was one time when both the neighbor's well and the public well in the center of our village weren't running. Louise, along with many other people, had to walk to the local coffee factory to get water from their well, a long 2-kilometer trek from our house with a 20-L jerry can full of water. Fortunately, this doesn't happen often, and it never lasts too long (the coffee factory was relieved of the extra pressure the next day), but it makes getting water harder and using it wisely more important.

At home, water is a precious commodity. Just think about all the things you use water for: cooking, washing clothes and dishes, bathing, drinking, it truly is essential for life. So, to make it last, people use as little water as possible when washing clothes or dishes while still getting them clean; 20 liters of water would probably last an individual Rwandan an entire day of bathing, cooking, and cleaning. On my part, I use only about 5 liters to bathe each morning and wash my socks and underwear (we were told in training that it is rude to have someone else wash your underwear), and I use about 3 liters each week when I mop my room. I try to make it so that Louise has to make as few trips as possible with our old jerry can. I'm sure I can get more efficient, but my housemates already remark on how little water I use to bathe, insisting I should use a full basin (about 10 liters!), but I don't need twice as much water, and I save 5 liters for the day's lunch.

So, there you have it, the story of water in Rwanda (or at least in my village), as requested by Nannie, one of my faithful readers (anyone can request a subject they would like to learn more about). If you want to try your own little Rwandan adventure in the comfort of your own home, try bathing with 5 liters of water (use a bucket for a true experience) and let me know how it goes. Or, if you just want to build some muscle mass, carry around a 20-liter jerry can full of water for a while, maybe trying out carrying it on your head, which I've never done but a lot of people do. Whatever you do, I hope you enjoyed the post, and maybe even learned something, and I'll be back again next month. Until then, murabeho!