Catching Water......Normal Part of life in Congo

Every once in a while (like tonight) we have trouble with our water system here in Kinshasa. Sometimes we have a trickle of water with no hot water at all....sometimes we have only cold water....and sometimes the water faucets seem dryer than the Mojave desert in August. Last week it was like that and lasted for nearly 3 days. When that happens Grace and I are taking our water jugs and going to school to fill them up and there we take cold showers so we can get clean too. The real problem is flushing the toilets...you need lots of water for that job and I have a tendency to need to flush toilets lots.....maybe too much info, sorry.......so we've acquired the use of big buckets that the chlorine came in for the school pool. We have two of them and they both were used up by the end of the 2nd day.....so on that 2nd night, it rained (thankfully), I caught the rain water out my front door and filled those babes up in order to keep our toilets flushed.....whew!!!!!!!