Water and life- Part 1

   Water is such a vital part of life for every person in the world. For those of us in the West it is easy to forget how nice it is to just turn on the faucet and get clean safe drinking water without going anywhere. Today I wanted to show you what it is like to get water EVERY DAY in a village in PNG. I'm sure Tiffany has told you already but almost every job that is done in PNG has a gender. The job of getting water is female. Most of the time it falls on the girls in the family. Very early on in our stay they told Mae to get our water containers and go with the other girls to get the water. I (Matt) helped Mae some, but when I did all the people would snicker and stare. So more often that not it was either Mae and the girls or Mae and Tiffany.
    There was a river within a five minunite walk of our house but this water was used for bathing and washing dirty dishes and clothes, so the water was not drinkable. The drinking water came from a spring that was about a 15 minunite walk from our house. Below are a series of pictures that show Mae walking with a bilum (string bag) full of water bottles to the spring.

(leaving the village)

(the trail beside the river)

(the first of 3 river crossings)

(almost there)

   As you can see this is quite a walk there. It is also incredibly hot living on the equator so you have to drink a ton of water. The more you walk, the more you sweat, the more water you need, it is a visious cycle. What you see Mae carying is not even all the water we need for a day. I was also carrying 2- 2.5 gallon water bottles. Once you get to the water there is a strict procedure observed by evey member of the village to keep the drinking water clean. There is a lot more to say about this so I will continue it tommrow.