What are You Drinking?

At a recent Clean Water lesson we passed around the results of a water test we took the week before. Each woman took a sniff of the black, stinky, unboiled water and compared it to the clear and clean boiled water.* “Ai-ee!” They said in surprise, “We’ve been drinking this junk without even knowing it!”

In villages all over Southern Kyrgyzstan, people’s water supply is limited, as is their understanding of what is living in their water. It is common to drink un-purified water from the tap or even out of the canals. This causes all kinds of stomach and intestinal problems, as well as worms.

During our Sanitation and Hygiene course, women participate in 4 lessons covering topics such as Clean Water, Garbage Disposal, Disease Transmission and Proper Toilet Construction. During the clean water lesson, we took samples of boiled water and normal tap water and tested them (see picture right). Visibly seeing the difference in the bacteria content of different water samples helped women to understand the importance of clean water for health.

Now the participants of CDI’s Sanitation and Hygiene seminar are boiling their drinking water. One woman told us of a system she made to always have boiled and cooled water available for her children.

We’re excited to see the difference our course is making; seeing that people are drinking life-giving water, not bacteria-laden water!