But, also water

Thursday was another eye opening experience. As we went to the different homes with these water filters, the conditions continue to surprise. A woman shared before we even started our presentation that her family has had many cases of illness and several hospital visits for her children due to contaminated water. The cistern that this community stores it's bore water in goes through no cleaning process of any kind. It comes out of the ground, is stored in a concrete vault, and gets piped right into their house. It has made me thankful for the odd tasting tap water at home. It has no bacteria, no metal, no dirt. As our teams poured water into the pre-filters (a little screen at the top of the bucket made to catch the bigger items and preserve the heavy duty filters inside), they were seeing small spiders scurrying around and other bits as well. One group even saw a baby scorpion. None of this was a shock to the people who live here. Let me say that again, a baby scorpion in the drinking water was not surprising. Say what you will about our tap water. Use your Brita filters and buy your bottles, but nothing in my tap water has ever had the ability to come after me with a stinger. When I left for this trip, I thought that we were going to help keep people from getting sick, which we are. We were going to help people have clear water instead of brown, which we are (except in the Kava situations!). But, seeing the conditions is something more than I expected.

It is easy to look at the beauty of the island and it's people, and miss the needs of those people.