Stress

Living with all different types of stress is a daily encounter, we are no different. We are living in the water tank of West Africa, but with no rain our water tower has been dry for three weeks. This is classed as water stress due to scarcity, this is likely to become worse across the globe as the climate changes and it is even predicted that conflicts may result due to the lack of water. The town provides piped water every other day, but due to illegal connections and leaking pipes, the pressure is not enough to get the water up into the tower. Our neighbours have a stand-pipe with no tank, they get plenty of water, but have no-where to store it, we have storage but no water. How ironic is that! Therefore we fill our barrels from the neighbours tap every other day. The barrels need to be brought into the house, this aggravates Andy back. Bucket showers, bucket flushing, buckets to fill the water filters, there are buckets everywhere. Trying to fill pots and pans from a barrel leads to spills which all take time. Talking of water, the first rains of this years rainy season have fallen and with that many more mosquito's. We sat down to watch a DVD and during the hour long episode, Andy killed around 30 mosquito's with his electronic zapper. Yet another stress to add to the list. Next week we will attend the Swiss missions annual retreat, this is in Central Guinea, it is much cooler there and we were advised to take some warmer clothes for the evenings. Another stress is who will look after our dog, rabbits and plants while we are gone? WOW, what is it like living with stress. If anyone is stressed and would like to offload, please email us. Our very dry tree and a bucket warming our shower water.