water

I definitely used to take water for granted - of course I could have a shower everyday - and a hot one at that. of course we could wash dishes -again with hot water. washing clothes - as many loads as I want to do. Now that we've lived here, my perspective has changed - I appreciate water and electricity so much!

Honduras seems to have a love/hate relationship with water. We have times of the year that there are droughts and no one has enough water and we are all rationing our water because we don't know when and how much will come through our pipes to our houses water storage (in our case we're blessed with a nice big cistern unlike others who don't have any water storage at all). we usually get water every other day - some only get water every 30 days. THEN there are times - like now - that we have way too much water -that the reserves are over flowing and there is flowing and mud slides etc. Sometimes we get some much rain that the ground cannot soak it all up and we have standing water in our yard. Currently all the dirt roads are in terrible condition because of the rivers that have been running down and across them for the last 2 months. For a while we needed 4 wheel drive to get to our house. So we either have too little or too much. maybe someday the government will figure out how to make more reserves to balance this out some.

below: this is the color of the public water that at El Ayudante - yuk!

Then there is the drinking water. Water is not safe to drink here yet a lot of the poor and rural communities drink it anyways. One more thing that adds to our everyday to do list is that we purify our water - we have a purifier that our water drips through so that it's clean.

above - this is how we purify our water - we go through almost a 5 gallon of drinking water a day.

Here is a blurb about water in Honduras from a ministry that works with the water in Honduras. (from www.waterforpeople.org)

Water and Sanitation

A recent water and sanitation sector analysis reported that in 2001, Honduras had reached water coverage for 80% of its total population and 70% of those living in rural areas. But the same study revealed that water quantity and quality are not adequate, and suggested that the existing infrastructure poses a serious health risk to citizens. An alarming 90% of the water supply is intermittent and unreliable. This study found that only 44% of the water provided is effectively disinfected and that there is a lack of adequate water quality control and monitoring, especially in rural areas. Many rural communities have no water infrastructure whatsoever. Sanitation coverage in Honduras is improving, reaching 68% of the total population but only 50% of the rural populace.