It's true- we live off the grid, despite being just 4km from the township where many have electricity, albeit not 100% of the time. Our village does not have electricity or running water, so here's how things work...:
No Electricity at Night:
When it gets dark, we stay in. Unlike our Zambian friends, we can't see at night and need some kind of light. At night, we rely on candles and wind-up or solar-powered flashlights to see- and with the creepy-crawlies around, we want to be able to see what's going on in the dark corners!
Since both of our headlamps have broken, we light several candles around the house each night. Thus, we go through our candle stash much faster than other volunteers seem to. But, it's not a problem because in the township we can buy candles for about 10 US cents each. Next time you have a power outage in the evening and have to light candles, think of us :)
Cooking:
When we want to cook, Shaun grabs some charcoal from the 50kg sack we keep in our house. He breaks it up with a hammer, then fills our charcoal brazier, lights the charcoal with dry grass (which is proving an issue in rainy season) and then swings the brazier until the charcoal lights and we have a cooking fire. Then, I cook, which really isn't as tricky as I thought it would be, once I got over not being able to regulate the heat.
As a side note, Shaun and I an agreement that since I'm in charge of all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., his duty is to start the brazier.
Charging Stuff:
For small appliances like our mp3 players, GPS and digital camera, we have a small, portable solar panel that allows us to charge things via USB cable, as well as rechargeable AA batteries. It works pretty well, especially since it still charges under overcast skies.
For larger things, we've set up at our house what I like to call “Zam-tricity”. We've rigged up a car battery to an inverter, which we plug our phones, Nook (eReader) and laptop into in order to charge them. Each sunny day we're home, we give the car battery a booster charge by hooking it up to our solar panel that we set up in the sun in back of our house (so as not to advertise to passers by that we have it). The solar panel gives enough of a charge to the battery so that we only have to take the battery into town for charging once a month (as opposed to once a week otherwise). We expect we'll have to take the battery into town for charging more often during rainy season because there will be less sun of which to take advantage.
Now, taking the battery into town is an excursion of its own. We don't have access to vehicles and paved roads, but we do have mountain bikes and a decent enough dirt road to get us to town. Shaun loads up the battery (concealed in a chitenge or Ralph's shopping bag Mom sent) on the back of his bike, and he rides down the dirt road to our welder friend in the town's market. We leave the battery with our friend overnight and he charges the battery for 4,000 kwacha (about 80 US cents). The ride there is the easy part because it's mostly downhill. However, the ride back to our place is all uphill and it starts with a very steep climb from the market, which levels off into a more gentle uphill slope to our village.
Communication:
There's a post office in the township just 4km from our house. However, we have pretty good Airtel (formerly Zain) and MTN network coverage at our site/house. So, with our Nokia internet mobile phones, we find Facebook and e-mail a better way to stay in contact with folks at home. I'm amazed at this every day: we can post status updates and pictures, receive and sometimes send emails, read the news, even surf the web. Yet, our village doesn't have basic electricity nor running water. It's a very interesting situation I find myself pondering often. One of these days I'll tackle the subject in this blog.
Drinking water:
We get our water from a stream about 3 football fields away from our house. Actually, I should say our village helpers (village teenagers, 13-17 years old) get our water for us at the stream. We pay them a very attractive 500 kwacha (about 10 US cents) per container of water they fetch for us, and we have a couple teens who come by everyday to ask if they can get water for us. They take our two 20-liter jerry cans down to the stream, fill them up and carry them back- on their head- to our doorstep. Those containers are heavy- I have no idea how the kids carry them on their heads.
After the kiddos bring back the water, I pour a capful of chlorine in the water to treat it. We shake the containers and then let them sit for 30 minutes or so to allow the chlorine to go to work. After that, I pour the water into our two heavy-duty, Peace Corps-issued, 5-liter water filters. I've been told we should be filtering and then chlorinating the water, but (1) that's a big pain and (2) so far we've had no issues or illness.
Because we get our water directly from a stream (as opposed to well or, even better, a borehole) the candles for our filter get slimy and dirty pretty quick and then stop filtering the water through. So, about once a week, I take apart our filters and clean the candles with an old toothbrush. It sounds like a pain, but it takes less than 30 minutes, and in the village, you have time for these kinds of chores... plus it's water- it's a priority :)
Bathing:
We do not have an indoor bathing area, but rather an outdoor, grass bathing shelter (“ulusasa” in bemba). When we first moved in, our ulusasa had a dirt floor, but our counterpart cemented it for us. He also cemented a walkway from our front porch to the bathing shelter so we don't have to walk in the mud- I love it!
In our bathing shelter, we have a 5-gallon solar shower which is basically a black plastic bag that warms the water inside using the sun's rays and then sprinkles your bathing water out of a hose attached to the bottom of the bag. During the hot season, we get warm showers, but lately during the rainy season, our showers have been cold (but quite refreshing) because there's little sun to warm the water. We're not motivated enough to get a brazier going to heat water in the mornings just for bathing, so a cold shower it is. And it really isn't a big deal when we're in the village. We find we get dirty enough that getting clean outweighs the need for warm water- hehehe
Dishes:
Dishes, of course, are all done by hand and I often have little helpers for this chore, too. Little girls in the village come by most mornings and ask if they can do our dishes. When I have dishes for them, they literally squeal with delight! We pour a basin of water to soap up the dishes and scrub off the food. Then I fill another basin with water to rinse off the dishes. Then, when the suns comes out, I like to set the dishes out in the sunshine to dry (covered, though so the dust doesn't get them dirty all over again). And if I have helpers, I always thank them with a “sweetie” (usually a fruity gummy vitamin).
Laundry:
Yep, this is all done by hand, too. Unlike fetching water and dishes, I do this one all on my own. It's actually quite nice to do in the heat of the afternoon because I usually get wet and it cools me off. One basin is for soaping up and using my Zambian bamaayo skills to scrub out the smells and stains. Then, another basin of water for rinsing out the soap. Then, I hang the clothes up on the line outside to dry.
Because we have to worry about bot fly laying their eggs on our damp clothing, when the clothes have dried on the line, I fold them up into a designated laundry bag and let them sit for 72 hours before we wear them. If the bot fly larva doesn't come into contact with human skin within 72 hours, then you don't have to worry about it burrowing into your skin and creating... yuckiness. My practice of waiting 72 hours may be overkill since I hang our clothes to dry on a wire, not a bush like I've seen most Zambians do. Better safe than sorry, I say.
And rather than wait, I could also iron our clothes with a village charcoal iron to kill the larva and dry the clothes. However, I haven't found one yet and even if I did, I'm not sure I could get Shaun to go through the hassle of lighting a brazier to get hot coals to fuel the iron... we also don't have a surface (like a table, etc.) good for ironing. So far, it's much easier to just wait a few days.
The “Toilet”:
We don't actually have a toilet because we don't have running water, nor anything to sit on when we “do our business.” We have a pit latrine (hole in the ground) sheltered with mud-brick walls and a thatch roof (fancier ones have a roof made of metal sheeting). In Bebma, it's called an icimbusu, or “chimbus” for short. Perhaps one of these days I'll write an entry on the “chimbus”, but for now I'll leave it at that (who knows, maybe you're snacking as you read this).
So, that's how we're doin' it!
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