…and not a drop to drink? Yes, such has occasionally been the case in the last six-plus months here in Kenya. To say that water has been a challenge would certainly be an understatement.

It started with carrying water…and complaining.

Then, the blessing of a rainwater collection tank (and piping to a spigot right outside our back door!) followed by a catastrophic failure that required major re-investment and work.

Then, later, digging a borehole and developing it into a well–with no little trouble of its own. And finally, INDOOR RUNNING WATER at the kitchen sink and the hand-washing sink in the dining area! If you knew my sweet Uncle Bud (my grandfather’s brother), you’d smile like I did when I heard his response to that major advance in technology: “That’s an answer to a prayer I didn’t even pray yet!” But even gaining that involved its own time, money and stress. Plumbing (especially of the indoor variety) is not, as you can imagine, very common here, and there’s no Home Depot or Lowe’s for one-stop shopping. The local hardware store is barely adequate to the task. We’ve had fittings that don’t fit, hose that exploded under pressure, and leaks innumerable. We’ve disconnected and re-connected, tested, and replaced things too many times to count.

Icing on the cake? The loss of our American-bought well pump after a torrential rain somehow muddied the crystal clear well-water and the pump couldn’t keep up with continual use as we tried to clean out the system.  Glenn Roseberry (who visited us before moving on to Tanzania) graciously brought us a new pump in his luggage, and we recently got everything up and running once again.  Not sure why, but the water is no longer crystal-clear, so we’ve reverted to bleaching our drinking water again (after the failure of our brought-from-America Berkey water filter…sigh…)

All that to say, given our history with water, I’m not sure how long this will last–but we’re all very excited to have a HOT WATER SHOWER!