Blessing

Finally, 'mvua za vuli' (short rainy season) have arrived. A genuine blessing in this part of the world, and I guess, all over where people know what it means to lack water for certain periods of the year. Thank you, Lord!

For a few days now we have enjoyed thunderstorms with good downpours. Our plastic tanks filled up quickly and we pumped the rain water out of them up to the main concrete tank by the church. One good rain fills six tanks (3-4 thousand liters capacity) in a matter of a couple of hours. The main water tank by the church though depends mainly on the water from the village pipeline which never comes up our hill (we need to use boost pump each time we get the news that the water appeared in the neighbors' taps. We harvest the rain water only from the small portion of the church roofs, unfortunately, as the village pipeline failure to deliver water to inhabitants of Nyamisisye and Kiabakari villages in relatively new backward development.

It looks like the situation is not going to improve in the foreseeable future, so we have to react quickly and install gutters and build main retention tanks for rain water, funds permitting. Just a few pictures below taken with mobile phone camera to show you the beauty of the Vuli season.

Vuli

Looks like Vuli is finally knocking on the door...Vuli is the Swahili name for a small rainy season, the equivalent of European spring time. Clouds have been building up for several days, murky weather, humidity, hard to breathe air, barometric pressure changing constantly...First shy drizzles, be it at night or during the day, for a few minutes, and us running around with plastic buckets and containers, trying to catch every drop possible from roofs, gutters, anywhere...