A metropolis running out of water

You certainly discover how much humans depend on water when you visit a drought-stricken part of our world like Cape Town. I’m here working on a new story, where a severe drought is changing human behaviour and health.

The province’s administration describes the drought as just about the worst ever, and promotes a huge campaign to get Capetonians to reduce drastically the amount of water their households use. It’s about to hit them with a massive water price hike.

The city’s reservoirs are very low.

Because of its situation at the foot of Africa, dependable rain is restricted to winter usually and then

normally in enormous abundance.

However, the Southern Ocean, which brushes the toe of the continent, simply didn’t oblige in the last southern winter.

Don't flush toilets

The drought is really grim for locals who are urged to restrict their showering to an absolute minimum, to use washing-up water over and over again, and not to flush urine from toilets.

What they don’t talk about – probably daren’t mention – is that the huge number of tourists here at present are at serious risk health-wise from the army of restaurant staff who survive somehow in appalling ghetto camps around the city.

If hygiene is at an all-time low for households, imagine what it must be like in the squatter camps. (Or, if you are a visitor here, don’t! It’s better for peace of mind not to imagine ‘life’ in those make-shift townships.)

Stuart Lowman, writing in biznews.com, sums it up this way, ‘As it comes to grips with the worst drought in a century, the City of Cape Town hasn’t cut off the water supply yet but the extreme restrictions in place take it pretty close...’

A vast ocean sweeps billions of tons of salt water past this beautiful city, but the winter rains have been so abundant and reliable until recent times, no serious effort seems to have been made to build desalination plants.  - Continues on the blogs for my sailing adventure story, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com