I recently had the following questions asked:
"What is sanitation like? Presumably there is running water in the clinic, but is it at all common anywhere else? Do you have to boil water? Indoor plumbing, or all outdoor? Laundry in washtubs? Are water- and insect-borne diseases a big problem (malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, for instance?) "
Sanitation is a bit of a mixed bag here. Some people live in houses that are fully plumbed, and some live in mud huts with no running water or sanitation to speak of. I'm not aware of any sewer systems, but many houses have septic tanks.
The clinic has its own borehole that goes down some 1,000 feet to the water table. It draws clean, fresh water that does not need to be treated or filtered to drink. We get it tested every year, and so far it's cleaner than most tap water you would get in the States. At the volunteer bungalows, we have a tanganyika boiler, which the askari fire up at about 5:00am, so we have hot, running water in the mornings.
It's a very nice setup really, but not common at all. Boreholes cost about $30,000 USD to drill, and there's no guarantee that you will actually hit water. FAME's first borehole dried up after several years of use, and they had to drill another. Water shortages are a fact of life in Karatu, and during the dry season municipal water supplies can run out for weeks at a time.
In the house I'm staying at in town, the family has a 5,000 liter reserve tank that is filled from rainfall on the roof during the rainy season. Many households have some storage capacity, though 5,000 liters is relatively large.
Rain-filled storage at my house:
As for boiling water, I understand that most people do not. The water is NOT safe for someone like me to drink, but the Tanzanians' stomachs are equipped with different flora than mine. In my house, they boil all the water for drinking and washing dishes, but I think that's just because they know I'll get sick if they don't.
As for plumbing, we have indoor plumbing for the toilets, but many houses do not. There are faucets in the sinks, but they don't work. Instead we get water from the municipal pipes and from the reserve tank.
Our spigot for the municipal water source:
We have an indoor bathroom, with the squat style toilets are are universal here. In the picture below, I realize it looks pretty dirty, but in fact it's quite clean. The rather unfortunate brown and yellow marks are actually just caulk and paint spattered on the tiles. Tanzanians don't go in much for masking tape and drop cloths. (The carpenters and builders don't use measuring tapes, straight-edges or levels either.)
In the picture above you can see the yellow bucket with water for cleaning your left hand after you poop. (You only use your right hand for eating and greeting people.)
The shower is just a room with a drain in the floor. We have a shower head in ours, but I'm not sure if it works or not. For a hot shower, you heat the water in an electric kettle, and then add cold water until you get the right temperature. Here's the shower room:
The bath water is usually drawn from the rainwater tank, and it lives in a big metal barrel in the main part of the bathroom. Here you can see the bathwater barrel and the spear:
Laundry is done by hand in plastic wash tubs in the back yard. They get your whites very clean.
Water and insect-born diseases are a problem, but not as big a problem in Karatu as other parts of Tanzania, perhaps because the high altitude (5,000 feet) means fewer mosquitos. Typhoid is pretty rare, and so is Yellow Fever. We used to think malaria was rampant, then we got a better supply of testing kits, and it turned out that most people who thought they had malaria actually didn't. I still sleep in my pretty princess palace just in case. (It looks just like one that my sister had for her bed when she was twelve, only hers was purple.)
Pretty Princess Palace
I think that answers all the questions. If anyone else has questions, feel free to post a comment or shoot me an email.
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