The struggle to get Drinking Water
Clean drinking water is one of the main problems in the Transkei. During summer, people collect rain water for drinking, but in winter there's no rain for several months and all little streams dry up, just the main rivers still carry water but it's not good for drinking. The local women walk many kilometers every day to fetch water and carry it back on their heads ...
We are lucky to have a nearby spring, it is between some fields about 300m away from the lodge. At first we just laid a pipe into the spring and from there to the treehouse and the lower gardens. The treehouse (about 50m below the lodge) is just bit below the spring, so we can simply gravity feed the treehouse and the lower gardens. To get the water up to the lodge, we need a pump though ... So we built a small dam at the bottom garden, and from there we run a pipe to a small dam up at the lodge, and with a pump powered by the generator, we can some water up to the lodge. This is not for drinking though, the dams aren't clean enough, but we need water to build, to make bricks and to water the gardens at the top.
The Spring
This is the spring, between some trees and bushes, in a little dip between two fields.
To get water to the treehouse, we had to lay a pipe all the way from there to the spring. Then we carried buckets of water up the hill and slowly filled the pipe. The higher up we are, the more likely we are to get all the air locks out of the pipe. At the treehouse, the pipe is closed. Once it's full, someone has to run back and open the other end of the pipe, while the person at the spring dips the end of the pipe in a bucket of water. If it starts sucking quickly, it means there are no more air locks and the gravity feed should work properly. Then the pipe is closed again at the treehouse, and then the other end at the spring is carried down and lowered into the spring. Next time we open at the treehouse, it sucks water directly out of the spring. This process of filling the pipe sometimes needed to be repeated several times to get rid of all the air locks ... and eventually became our least favorite activity!! :-)
At a later point, after cattle had completely wrecked the spring and reduced it to a mud hole, we decided to seize the opportunity to digg it out a bit more, so that it holds more water. The soil is very rich in gray clay, and the water out of the spring always tastes a bit "clayish".
After digging it out, we fenced it in properly, with lots of barbed wire to keep the destructive cows out, and now it looks like a high security zone! After some days, the water level had filled up again and the spring was ready to use. The whiteish color is because of the clay content.
Bottom Dam
This is the bottom dam, at the lower gardens, where one end of the pipe from the spring comes to. The dam is laid out with black plastic but will at a later point get plastered with cement. This dam is filled with water directly from the spring.
The generator and the water pump then pump the water up to the top dam. The pipe and cables all run along the fence that seperates the hilltop and the lodge from the field just behind it.
Top Dam
The top dam was built in the same way as the bottom dam: just dig a hole and lay it out with thick black plastic. Make the side walls look nice by covering the plastic with stones or grass. :-)