Saturday, September 22, 2007

A Bucket of Water


Rainy season is slowing going its way. We had two days with no rain this week. At first we were so excited, because the roads get so bad when it rains. For example, last week when we emailed, it took us 3 hours to go 13-16 miles to the near town of Kapsabet. By the time we got there we were beyond frustrated and a little at loss of what to say after such a long drive. Today, it took us the same amount of time to make it to Eldoret, which is twice as far as Kapsabet.

We didn't realize, however, how useful the rain is, especially when it comes to baths and drinking water and cooking. We fill up our massive kettle and boil the water for 20 minutes and then purify it. But this week, both of our filters were mostly dry. We didn't take a bath for maybe 5 days? Disgusting, I know. We've vowed we will never go that long again without a bath. We actually had a shower head rigged up, so now we can climb up a ladder and pour water into this thing on top of the roof, which then flows down. It feels pretty luxurious! :)

I started to get a little worried after 2 days without rain. We didn't have water for showers, we didn't have water to cook with or to drink. We'd used up almost all of our bottled water. I wasn't sure what we were going to do. Both containers that catch the rain water were almost empty. I was sitting in the kitchen when I saw Borness peek around the corner of the house. She directed someone to the door, and a few moments later, a couple of the older girls walked around the corner with a huge bucket full of water. We hadn't said anything to her about needing water. She just noticed and did something about it without a second thought.

I almost cried as they set the water down, smiled, and left. Borness simply looked, approved, and disappeared. It's the little things like that bucket of water that show me the face of Christ.

- Gloria

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