The Weight of Water

I never knew the weight of water until I had to carry it.  Water carries with it, literally, a heavy weight.  At the same time, it bears a heavy significance, and in Liberia, a heavy burden.

Angie and don’t have running water in our house.  We haul it.  Because of that, I know that she and I together use approximately thirteen gallons of water a day.  This precious thirteen gets used for drinking, cooking, bathing, dishes, and laundry.  It comes from our neighbors’ private well, which sits about thirty yards from the house.  Every day, usually after we come home from school, we carry three empty 4-gallon buckets to the well.  We first have to open the lid, which keeps dirt and large animals from falling down the well.  (The well is sometimes padlocked so that “no one will poison the well.”)

Looking fetching while fetching water

A ratty rope connects the side of the well to an old palm oil jug used as a drop-bucket.  The bucket is lowered manually to collect about two gallons of water.  It is then raised, hand over hand, and dumped into one of the empty buckets next to the well.  In the rainy season, the water is about eight feet below ground level.  In the dry season, the well is about 25 feet deep.

The deep dark of the well

Two dips into the well fills one bucket.  Six dips into the well provide our water, and exercise, for the day.  The water is then carried back to the house.  Oddly, carrying two buckets is much easier than carrying one.  I suppose it’s a balance thing.  Once at the house, the water goes to two places – the bathroom and the kitchen.

Ben hauling water in his favorite (and Angie’s least favorite) shorts

In the bathroom is a 25-gallon barrel where we keep water used for bathing and flushing of toilet.  We top off the barrel and then leave a full bucket in the shower area.  A smaller 2-gallon bucket sits beside the toilet.  We scoop water from the barrel into this smaller bucket when flushing the commode.  To flush a toilet manually, you need to dump a fair amount of water into the toilet all at once.  Using a smaller amount of water or the same amount added slowly will only (ahem) stir the pot.  Bathing is done by ladling water from the bigger bucket or the barrel using a quart-sized scooper.  The same scooper is used for washing our hands.  Incredibly, two people can bathe with the water from one 4-gallon bucket.  That’s two gallons for a bath.  A low-flow shower head doesn’t even come close to that.

Our bathroom water supply

In the kitchen, two of the big buckets are kept on the floor right next to the sink.  Water is used for dishes (we have a sink but no faucet), washing hands, and cooking.  A quart-sized scooper transports water from the buckets to whatever place we need it.  We have two Peace Corps-provided water filters that purify our drinking water.  They use ceramic filters to get most of the bad stuff out of the water.  We fill the top section and gravity pulls the water through – akin to a large Brita water pitcher.  A spigot at the bottom of the filters dispenses the life-sustaining nectar.  Another covered bucket on the floor holds filtered water that we use for cooking.

Kitchen water business. The washtubs are for dishes and laundry.

When we leave the house, we always fill our water bottles.  We drink a lot of water.  Lately, Liberia has been hot and dusty.  The sun-baked dirt roads create dust clouds that irritate our noses and leave grit in our mouths.  And with the temperature averaging in the high 80’s and low 90’s, water has never tasted so good.   When our water bottles run dry, clean water is surprisingly accessible.  There are no taps in Liberia.  Hand pumps, open wells, and rooftop water tanks provided the country’s water, but these sources don’t provide clean water.  Instead, Liberians joins the rest of West Africa with the standard “bag water.”

Angie enjoys a refreshing drink from a plastic bag.

Bag water (also “sachet water,” “pure water,” or “mineral”) is just as it sounds – water sold in a plastic bag.  Each bag contains one pint of water and is about the size of a lunch-box sized bag of Doritos (to put it in American terms).  The plastic is clear and sufficiently thick that they don’t break easily.  They are sealed all the way around, with no openings.  To drink, one simply bites a hole in one corner of the bag and sucks out the contents.  Most bag water is sold quite cold and is very refreshing.  Treatment methods of the water vary from ultraviolet to chemicals (chlorine and iodine).  Occasionally you will get a bag that tastes a little like iodine, but we just think of it as keeping our goiters in check.  Bag water is available literally everywhere in Liberia – on the roadside, in schools, on the heads of passing vendors.  It is sold out of Coleman-style coolers which are easily recognizable.  Each bag has a standard price of $5 Liberian dollars – or roughly $0.07 USD.  That’s a pretty good deal as compared to Evian.  Bulk bag water is sold by treatment centers in bales of 48 bags.  A bale costs $200 LD, which nets a water salesman a modest profit of $40 LD ($0.55 USD).

A bale of beautiful bagged water.

We drink lots of water here, and we are very aware of where it comes from.  We see how important it is to simple life, and we realize how much water is really necessary to sustain it.  Living without running water has not been as difficult as we thought it would, but it has been an adjustment in our lifestyle.  Oddly, it took us being disconnected from the pipeline to become connected to our water.

Brushing

Recently we created a post called “Becoming Routine.”  Things are really becoming to feel “normal” here.  The things that really astonished or challenged us in the beginning are starting to seem ordinary.  That’s good, and it shows that we are adapting to life here.  But we need to remember that many things can still be interesting – and even amazing – to people outside Liberia.  Therefore, we’ll try to post more about our daily lives and routines.  That brings us to cutting the grass.

One of the challenges that we haven’t quite been able to meet in Liberia is that of maintaining an attractive lawn.  Grass and weeds grow here at the same rate as they do anywhere.  But instead of firing up the handy Snapper lawnmower or Stihl weedwhacker, Liberians take a more manual approach.  Here, folks use a “whipper” to “brush” the grass.  Brushing is a labor and time-intensive exercise that, for the inexperienced, can be frustrating and futile.  The whipper (see picture) is a three-foot long, flat-bladed tool that you swing repeatedly with one arm to cut or uproot the grass.

The mighty Whipper

The whipper is bent at the end, leaving the cutting edge parallel the ground.  It is swung as if you were golfing with one arm.  The grass must be attacked very near the ground for maximum leverage.  A too-high angle of attack creates little more than a pleasant swishing sound.  With the use of proper technique, a freshly-brushed yard will display clumps of roughly cut or completely-uprooted vegetation and lots of bare dirt.

My first few attempts at brushing were comical, with each swing of the whipper being a mere suggestion that the grass fall over.  Those early attempts led only to a sore arm and the laughter of neighbors.  Over time my technique has improved, but my stamina is not up to the task.

The backswing

Mediocre technique leaves grass unchanged.

Things can be tough in Liberia.  Even the grass is called Elephant Grass, because it can be as strong as an elephant.  Brushing is one of the few household chores that we have contracted out.  We currently pay two students to cut our grass.  They are young men in peak physical condition, and our medium-sized yard takes them collectively three hours.  And while we have given up on handling our own lawncare, I still take a few symbolic swings of the whipper every month or so.

Our four-man crew tackles a bushy yard

Ghana

Angie and I recently returned from a two-week trip to the West African nation of Ghana.  Ghana lies two countries to the east of Liberia.  Our flight hopped over Cote d’Ivoire.  We spent two weeks travelling from the capital city, Accra, to Tamale and Mole National Park in the north, and then back south to coast.  It was a challenging, but enjoyable trip.  We are happy to have had the chance to see some more of West Africa.

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Becoming Routine

Angie and I are back from Ghana.  For those we didn’t inform, we took a two-week trip to the West African nation of Ghana over the Christmas break.  We had a great time and will post more about it soon.  But for now, we have settled back into the school year.  Life here has become fairly routine, which is a real blessing.  We no longer feel like strangers or oddities in our own city.  Instead, people seem to have become accustomed to seeing us on a daily basis.  I feel like we have finally been downgraded from “freakish attraction” to “mildly interesting.”  We seem to have become real members of the community.

The dry season is here.  With the end of the rains have come dusty roads, chilly nighttime temperatures, and irritated nasal passages.  It rains maybe once every other week now.  We miss the rain, especially at night.  Sleeping in the rain is a glorious experience, especially in a place where the noise of life is a near-constant.  But for those who have to travel on dirt roads, the dry season is the high season.

We live about a 45-minute walk to the ocean.  On rare occasions during the rainy season we could hear the dull and distant sound of the surf.  Lately, at night, though, we can hear the crash of the waves as if they were only a block away.  I wonder if sound travels better in dry air.

We are coming up to the end of the third grading period, and thus the end of the first semester.  The grading system is very interesting here.  To summarize a speech given to the students this morning by the Vice Principal, “It doesn’t matter if you failed all three grading periods.  If you do well on your semester test, you will pass.”  Basically, the students’ semester grade is based on an average of the three period grades.  Then, once the period average is found, it is again averaged with the semester test.  Thus, the one test carries as much weight as three academic quarters.  We expect the next few weeks to be an interesting time as students and faculty respond to the increased pressure and stakes of the semester tests.

We continue to miss family and friends, and we look forward to hearing the latest news. Here is a teaser photo from our trip to Ghana.  More pictures to come.

We acheived our goal of seeing an elephant on Christmas!