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Posted by Bill S on October 23, 2007 at 6:10:43 pm EDT
In reply to Water purification in extreme conditions posted by Bill S on October 19, 2007 at 11:58:04 am EDT

Chumango -
Tanzania (and most of the African countries) has a requirement about hiring local guides, porters, and such ... unless you are with one of their rangers. The guide services mostly use hotels (and some fancy "camps" that put KOA to shame). We get the more primitive approach of traveling with a ranger acquaintance (but get to get more up close and personal). After Barb returns to the US, I am hiking up Kili, and there I can use mountain streams that are clear (albeit being habitat for some nasty critters, thanks to some of the latrines being very close to the streams, like within 20 meters or less). For the mountain, the Steripen and a regular pump filter are just fine. It's just in the game parks where we will be away from clean sources for a few days.

The PuR approach appears to be promising, with the possibility of introducing the technology to some of the villages (that's why P&G and PuR developed it, though they haven't got much presence in Tanzania at this point). If we do get things arranged for this, the 10 liter unit size is not a problem, as it would be for parties of less than 5 or so. It's not clear whether I can qualify for a pre-retail package, although they are interested in the arrangements for our trek.

A couple of people have mentioned stills - there is an energy consumption problem. The cost is more than the PuR chemical flocculation approach - note as mentioned in Alicia's post above that 6 packets is $15 (treats 60 liters or about 15 gallons of water that can be pretty murky, which is $0.25/liter, a lot less than commercially bottled water. A large bulk purchase can get it down to under 10 cents/liter. The other packaging she mentions includes the mixing and storage containers and stirring paddle.

Fred, thankfully, we will not be going into any of the areas where the little "worms" that can enter through unbroken skin reside. But, again, the approach the big game hunters use (aside from staying in hotels that have sizeable treatment facilities) is a combination of carting along large supplies of pretreated water and boiling. They have a bigger budget than we do (after all, the licenses themselves cost more per person than our entire budget including airfare).

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