Friday, April 10, 2009

Arid.


Dry season is finally on its way out. Woo Hoo! You can almost measure it by the amount of water that my body needs has reduced drastically. During Feb. and early March I was drinking about 6-7 Nalgenes a day. Quick, how many gallons is that? I want to guess 2 or 3? Anyway, now I'm down to about 4. Much easier. It was work forcing down that much water! My filter never had a moment's rest. I do have a nice filter though. Peace Corps provides us with one that holds about 144 oz. It uses "candles" to filter the water- 2 ceramic cylanders with sand inside. I store water in a 40 gal plastic barrel that goes for everything- bathing, dishes, washing clothes, drinking...Savelugu Deaf has no natural water. Carter Center drilled some wells a few years ago but those only have water during the rainy season. No help. Around campus there are various tanks- plastic, cement, metal that organizations have donated to store water. So, 3 other teachers and I share a cement one. We pay for a water tanker to come fill it ($8 per tanker, which is somehow expensive) So sometimes they can't afford it and I'm on my own to figure water out... Oh water.

I'm lucky though. Dry season is much shorter than it used to be. In late March it started raining about once a week. I guess just 10 years ago it didn't start until the beginning of June. Global Warming?

Speaking of global warming- Yesterday, a teacher sat me down and said, "Kari, tell me everything you know about global warming." How do you begin to answer that? I just laughed and said I would try. We talked for awhile and ended up with a cause/effect flow chart that looked like this:
Pollution/Smog -> Holes in Ozone/ blanket of smog in atomosphere -> harmful rays more acces to Earth/ trapping of heat -> general warming of Earth -> ice caps to melt more than normal -> oceans' rise -> ocean currents change -> jet streams in air change -> ?lots of theories about what next? ice age?
How did I do? Of course I kept saying, "I'm not a scientist!" I also explained how right now we are in the ice caps melting phase. The stuff beyond that is speculation. Some people say it is all speculation.
The funny part is, after all that, the guy says, "Good! Now I can go to Denmark!" Haha, apparently there is a group choosing people to go to a global warming seminar in Denmark. The guy just wants to go to Denmark... Oh well...