The Spring

As I've said before, I live in Grahamstown. It's quaint and chilled out, it's a great place to live.

But one of the real drawbacks to Grahamstown is our water. A couple of years ago we had a real water scare, where thousands of baby trout died at the Rhodes fish farm and there was a lot of concern about dangerous levels of heavy metals in our water supply. Everyone was warned not to drink the tap water and we lived on bottled water for a week or two. Rhodes bought what must have literally been tons of bottled water for students and set up water tanks around campus. It turned out, after all of the drama, that the water was safe for humans. So no Erin Brockovich for Grahamstown!

But, to quote the Rhodes followup email from after the water scare, the water is "safe (if unpleasant) to drink." Oh dear, you must know, our water is unpleasant. I only really realised it when I'd been at home in East London for a while and when I came back to Grahamstown I found my tea had the most unpleasant taste. I tried to figure out what the problem was for ages - I thought it was the type of milk, or maybe onion in the fridge had made the milk tase odd. But I finally realised the issue was the water.

Yuck.

Our water goes through phases where its browny, brown, white, has floaty white bits or floaty black bits.

Yuck.

And it often tastes like dirt.

Yuck.

I asked a friend who works in water research what the issue is, and she tells me that the problem is really that Grahamstown's water pipes are very old. So they have cracks where soil gets into them. Which isn't dangerous, I'm told. It just makes the water taste like dirt.

Of course, because we have all watched Erin Brockovich we still harbour concerns about our fertility and future health and so forth. But wonderfully, there is a spring just on the outskirts of Grahamstown. And Grahamstown is small, so "on the outskirts of Grahamstown" is a 10 minute drive away from pretty much anywhere.

So over these past years, with the water concerning all of us, the spring has become a pretty busy place. Sometimes you go there and wait half an hour in a line to get water.

This is a typical queue at the spring, Sunday afternoon I think...


The spring is in a dip just just off the side of the road. You can see my car Chloe (blue midge!) on the road, and some other cars. There's usually at least one or two cars parked next to the spring, sometimes five or six or more.



This is a close up of the actual spring, and my water container being filled up. The whole area has been built up with steps from the road down to the spring, and the pipe and area to stand your containers on as they fill up.

I have no idea who first set it up, or who maintains it. There is a placard fixed to the fence behind the spring which labels it "God's property" and asks people to keep the area clean.

I quite enjoy going to the spring because it takes a while for water containers to fill up so you get to chat to the people in the line around you. And they are all sorts of people, all ages and walks of life, so its rather nice to chat to some different people.

And of course the blue skies above and the sound and smell of running water. Lovely.