On Tuesday I only saw my younger group for half a session as some nice people from the water board came to do a special assembly to explain about 'Safe Water'.
South Africa has some of the cleanest water in the world and yet for a lot of people in the valley, there's no access to it. For instance, at Sithembakuye, they had running mains water which strangely stopped working when the water board were doing some work in the ridge in Botha's Hill. Since then they've relied upon the daily delivery by the water lorry who drives around the valley. For a family with nearly 20 people in one house plus a lot of little people in the day care centre, collecting water is a big job. At least there are enough people around to help carry it. Still, whatever the water board did to 'improve' the availability of water to the valley has obviously not been that successful. Someone's water somewhere might be sorted, but a whole stretch of the valley has been left dry, literally.
Anyway, Assembly.
The younger children gathered under a big tree and stood to hear what the water board lady had to say. As it was in Zulu, I only understood about half of it. I think she was explaining to them the water cycle and also which water you can drink and what to avoid. It's good they go round explaining this to children, some of whom might only have the choice of the river or the river as their water source. The river that runs through the valley is a very dark sludgy green colour. Lovely. And they wonder why people construct pipes to tap into other people's sources of water...
