33+ Years without DRINKABLE TAP WATER!

For over 33 years I have lived in Africa and worked as a nurse at Bongolo Hospital. The water that comes into our houses and into the hospital wards has been pumped directly from the Louetsi river into a reservoir and then it has come into our houses by gravity.

At first I had a BUCKET FILTER SYSTEM. With a bucket of tap water (from the river) on the top.... and a filter in that bucket. The water would enter the filter and then go by plastic tube down to a lower bucket that received the filtered water. I would drink the water in the bottom bucket.

In recent years I have had an inline filter connected directly to the tap so that I could drink water that came through that filter. I fill up bottles so that I already have filtered water when I need it.

In the past ten days a team of four men have been on our hospital compound to install a PROFESSIONAL FILTERING SYSTEM that has started to filter all of the water that comes out of our taps! It also chlorinates the water.



This afternoon some of us had a tour of the facilities, so we could be convinced that the water was potable, pure. After all, I have been filtering my water for over 33 years! That means that I haven't even brushed my teeth using the tap water. Some of us needed to be convinced!  Here are some photos from the tour.


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After a few weeks of this purified water going through our old pipes to clean them out, the chlorine level coming out of the taps in our homes will be checked to make sure that they have the correct amount of chlorination. At that point our water will be DRINKABLE!
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Today's Positives:
1. We will soon be able to drink the water coming out of our home taps without first filtering it!
2. The patients at the hospital will now have drinkable water instead of having to buy it from other sources.
3. The water is not only pure, it is clear. The water in our house has had so much dirty sediment that sometimes washing our clothes changed them to a dingy color instead of whitening them!

Now..... if I only liked to DRINK WATER!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Shall I give them Away?

Yesterday afternoon I got in the mood for Oatmeal cookies. What I really wanted was an Oatmeal- Peanut Butter cookie (healthily made) like I had eaten at a SparkFriend's house on Friday. Well, I went into the Kitchen to make cookies but did not have the right recipe and I really wanted peanut butter to be in my oatmeal cookie.

I spotted a package of brownie mix that really needed to be used up because it was old and I had fresher mixes in the house. I decided to make the Brownies. They were no fuss and were done in about 40 minutes, complete with putting them together. I ate two brownies right away!

What they tasted like was................ old. I had saved the package tooo long. I don't know what an old package mix tastes like in the States but on the very humid African Equator, well, if we keep things around too long they taste.... well. I can't even let you know other than OLD.

Now for my dilemma. Should I save them and eat them? If I frosted them would the frosting make them taste better? I really didn't want to waste the frosting. Should I give them to the lady who cleans house for me and maybe she or her kids would like them? It's not that they were tooo bad but I just knew that they weren't .... well, they were old tasting. They looked ok.... see the photo!



What should I do? What would YOU do?

Today's Positives:
1. After warning the cleaning lady that perhaps only her kids would like them, I gave all my brownies away today! 
2. I've been on track with my eating today!
3. I will go for a walk outside today!

Thanks everyone who follows my blog.