Day 4: Aug 19, 2017. Saturday Today, Joseph, Naomi and I continued to interview families while Rory, Liz and Oscar of Joshua Orphan went to test samples of water from different boreholes. Rory and Liz found multiple samples from the main boreholes in Solomoni as well as the river Likhubula. They added coliform to test for ecoli, and tried incubating it afterwards using body heat. Joseph Naomi and I on the other hand traveled to the smaller villages of Solomoni further north to see how their water needs were being handled. The first village was called James Allen, and had a very sound borehole that multiple villagers recalled not being especially polluted. The next village, Nthatha, had more issues with their water supply, with some villagers complaining about stomach pains during the rainy season. However this village had recently been given chlorine tablets by the government to help combat the problem.
The last village was Jenari, and had more issues than the previous two since the handle at the borehole was breaking. Many of the village children wanted a photo with the borehole so we were inclined to pose with them, although they were quickly disappointed we didn’t have enough cups or “tumblers” to give each of them. The rest of the day was spent recording our data in excel spreadsheets and mapping out which interviewees used which boreholes.