54) Water Woes

A View of the House

Before we started getting the house organised or our furniture in place we had to explore our new surroundings. The garden was very overgrown, it had not been looked after for four years but whoever had laid it out originally really knew what they were doing and had created something very beautiful.

The house was on the side of a steep hill with a wonderful view across a valley to the mountains of Mozambique on the other side. There were high rolling hills with pockets of rain forest growing in the folds. I was told there was very little natural rain forest left in Rhodesia and so it was very special and needed to be preserved. The altitude was around 1400 meters and the rainfall average was about 1500mm. The wet cool climate gave The Vumba it’s unique character.

View from the House, Mozambique in the Distance

We took the dogs and went down the hill to the stream; we discovered a quite large dam that was our water supply. There were rhododendrons and camellias, flowering ginger plants and water lilies. Down stream from there was a smaller dam that we thought was enchanting. With high trees and thick bush all around it, it had a magical quality and so we called it “our fairy dam”. The sunlight filtered through the trees and there were daffodils, azaleas, hydrangeas and primroses growing there. None of these flowers were indigenous to Rhodesia so someone had planted them all and done an enormous amount of work building dams, terraces, footpaths and bridges. It was a pity that all their hard work had become over grown but it was lovely just the same.

Beside the house was a large section planted with citrus fruit, oranges, lemons and grapefruit. The lemons and grapefruit were fine but the oranges had very thick skins and were very sour. I don’t think the climate was suitable for them. Still they made pretty good marmalade.

Behind the house was land that had been cleared and terraced. It must have been the vegetable patch and we grew veggies there later on. Also in this section were our water tanks, they held the water and it was gravity fed to the house. But they were empty at the time and Jonny knew he had to get busy and sort them out.

There was a flight of steps that were cut into the side of the hill from the side of the house down to the first dam; one could imagine how much work it must have been just to make these let alone all the other pathways. At the bottom of the steps was a wooden landing that was supposed to hold the pump and motor for our water. A turn to the left took us along a path into the rain forest. The trees there were wonderful, huge indigenous trees that must have been there forever and there were tree ferns and cycads. Long vines hung from the tree branches, (just like the one’s that Tarzan used to swing from in the films.) The canopy of trees was so high and thick that there were many places that did not get much sun and interesting mosses and fungi grew there.

Jonathan, Dominic and I walking in the Rain Forest

Yes it was a wonderful place but we needed to have water so Jonny had to get busy reinstalling the pump and motor. First he had to collect them from Jim Taylor and get it down to the dam, a feat in itself. Once it was in position he realised that all the fittings to connect them were missing so he had to find new fittings which took time but he eventually got it all sorted out and we all gathered round to see our water being turned on. We were disappointed because the pump would not work. I am not very mechanical so am not sure what the problem was but I know it had something to do with leather caps that were on the pistons. They were not new and with not having been used for so long they had deteriorated so much that they no longer worked so I was dispatched to Umtali, our nearest town, to buy some new ones. I did not expect that the salesman would even know what they were let alone have them in stock so I was pleased to get them but by the time I got back up the mountain it was dark so there was nothing that Jonny could do to get the water fixed. Meanwhile all the water being used in the house had to be carried up the hill in buckets.

The next day as soon as Jonny got back from work he fitted the leather caps to the pump and once again we gathered for the occasion. The motor was started and the pump sprang into life, pushing the water through the pipes and up the hill. But then there was another problem the force with which the repaired pump worked was too much for the old pipes that had lain rotting in the ground for four years and they just burst so the water was just soaking into the ground. New pipes had to be bought and laid. We had to replace a long section that had been fairly near the surface but higher up the pipes were buried deeper and were in better condition. And still we carried water in buckets.

The Dam – Our Water Supply

Water was at last being pumped up the hill but it wasn’t coming out of our taps, it wasn’t even filling our water tank. We did not know where it was going. Jonny traced were the water was supposed to go and found that it went into what had once been a large sump at the top of the property and then was gravity fed down to the tank and from there down again to the house. The sump had been lined with plastic sheeting to hold the water in but over the years with no water in it the plastic had rotted away and so when the water was pumped into it it just seeped away. By now we were getting pretty desperate so Jonny just re-routed the pipes so that they did not go into the sump but went directly to the tank. Once again the motor was started, the pump sprang into life and pumped the water up the hill in our new pipes by our new route and into the tank. We all cheered and clapped, poor Jonny and all our helpers had worked very hard for over a week to get to this stage. He had had to work all day cutting timber and then come home and try to get the water sorted out. As the water filled the tank we were dismayed to see that the tank was full of holes and it was leaking out almost as fast as it was going in. We did not want to wait any longer for our water so we just patched up the holes with some sort of adhesive putty that worked very well and the tank started filling. We turned on the garden taps and water came out, we were so excited. Then we ran down to the house to open the taps there but that was another big disappointment, no water! Jonny had to trace along the pipe line to see how far the water was reaching and he came to an on line filter. It had two tubular cores in it and the cores were old and so full of mud and dirt that the water was not getting through. Well we had been using unfiltered water for about a week so we just took out the cores and got water to the house at last. Later we got new cores for the filter but for now at least we could bath, do the washing, clean the house and flush the toilets with water that had not been carried up the hill in a bucket. We just boiled the water we used to drink and cook until we got the filters sorted out.

Until you have lived for over a week without tapped water you just can’t appreciate how precious water is. That week taught me to consider how hard the lives of African women must be. I had servants to help with the task but as they were busy helping Jonny to deal with the problem I was left to carry some of the water myself. I did not have to carry it for miles, with a baby strapped to my back and a toddler at my skirt. The water I collected was clean and it was only a temporary arrangement. Rural African women have a pretty hard life. In some places they would have to carry every drop of water they used from a stream or a river. They would have to grow all the family’s vegetables and the water for their garden would mostly have to be carried. Cloths would have to be taken to the riverside to be washed and all their food would have to be cooked over an open fire. Help from their husbands was not usually forthcoming.