Month: October 2020

I thought it might be interesting to describe how we treat and use water here in Abidjan.  All of our missionary apartments have water filters installed at their kitchen taps.  If the apartments are in  buildings without a good water supply, we provide bottled drinking water.

We live on the top floor of an apartment building.  That means it’s a hard place for water to flow because we’re up so high.  We often go for days without running water, or the water only comes on in the night when we’re all asleep.

We buy drinking water in cases of 6 large 1.5 liter bottles for 2,500 or about .40-.50 cents/bottle. We keep about 4 bottles in the fridge, and drink from the one that’s open. When we have our meals, we put the bottle of cold water on the table and we both just drink from it. We don’t use glasses. It’s too much work to wash and sanitize the glasses. Our tap water isn’t filtered, but we use it (hot) for washing dishes with soap. We let the dishes air dry.

 

We have a water filtering system hooked up to the kitchen tap. There is a switch at the faucet you can turn to run the cold water through the filter. We have to change the filter every month or two.  The old filter is orange (the color of the soil here), the new one is white and clean.  We also keep a covered bucket of tap water on the floor in the kitchen and we dip from that on the days when we don’t have water (most of the time). The reddish-orange dirt in the water settles to the bottom.

When we empty the 1.5 liter bottles, I refill them (on a good water day) and add 3-4 drops of Clorox bleach and then we store those bottles in the spare bedroom/office closet for our emergency water storage.

 

There is a hot water heater mounted up on the wall over our washer and dryer in the kitchen. It’s electric and it holds enough for both of us to take a quick shower when we have enough water pressure, usually late at night.  That’s when we can flush the toilets and refill our buckets. I shower at the office more than I shower at home.

We keep a bottle of water in the bathroom for brushing our teeth and washing our hands when there’s not water flowing.

The shower in the bathroom is just a fixture on the wall. There is no enclosure to shower in. It’s just there in the bathroom and when you shower, the water just goes on the bathroom floor and down a drain. Nothing fancy or private.

That’s how we do water here in our apartment.  We have to be careful with the water because our American systems aren’t as strong as the Ivorians’ systems and we need to stay healthy.  So far, so good!