Not Elecricity..... Water!

Based on guide books, we had expected the electricity to be provided on a rolling blackout basis, with power provided to half of Kampala on any given day.  That could well be the case for other parts of the city but for where we live, the power is fine – it’s on all the time as far as I can tell although Michelle (our co-worker who lives across the street) said she saw it go out for ½ an hour the other night. The unexpected concern we have is for water! Our water is shut off during the day – it usually comes on sometime during the night and then is shut off again before morning. To address this issue, our house has a huge water tank up above the roof – you can see them all over the city, big water tanks perched above most houses. So whenever the water is on, everyone who is getting water is filling their tanks and then when the water is off you’re using up your “reserve.” A pump kicks in when you’re using your tank to bring the water up to about the same pressure as city water. It’s all automatic so we don’t really know when the city water is on or off except when we turn on the kitchen sink cold water which is connected directly to the city supply. Every other faucet in the house including the kitchen sink hot water is fed by the tank.  So we can tell if the city water is on or not.  Our hot water is generated entirely by solar although we do have a booster hot water heater in the kitchen for if we run out of solar-heated water which we haven’t yet. The solar does get quite hot and stays hot all night in an insulated tank – easily hot enough for morning showers.  Our co-workers Jake and Michelle have a much larger household than we do, with two children as well as their housekeeper and her son.  They have run out of water more than once when the city water did not come on at night.  Now they are able to come across the street to our place and fill up some buckets if necessary from our tank.  Praise the Lord that even in the midst of scarce resources He finds a way for His abundant streams of water to flow.          -Shauen