Access to safe drinking water

We take drinking water for granted. You are thirsty, you get water, you drink it, done.

Here, water has to either be purchased, treated or boiled. That's fine and dandy if you have the money to buy it or if you're in the comfort of your own home but in India not everyone is that lucky.

A woman, who is on the landscaping crew of Ozone, rings my door every day. I open it and get a lovely smile, a set of praying hands, and a "Namaska M'dam" as she hands me two empty 2-liter bottles. And every day I fill them and hand them back with a smile.

How else is this woman, who works in the sun all day long, supposed to drink? To purchase a 1-liter bottle of cheap drinking water is Rps. 13/. If you're only making Rps. 100/ a day it's a luxury you just can't afford. She can't get water from a hose or faucet because it's not potable without boiling it first. There are no drinking fountains. Now that I think about it, I can't recall a single drinking fountain except at the kids' school and possibly a mall.

My driver also has to get his safe drinking water from me. He doesn't bother with it in the early morning when he takes Erik to work - but when he comes back to pick me up he comes to the door with two empty 1-liter bottles.

I have an "RO" (Reverse Osmosis) system in my kitchen. This gives us purified water - pending the power is on - but the storage tank is probably 4-liters and that lasts us a while. We use this for drinking water but also to wash fruit/vegetables and anything else food related. We wash our dishes in untreated water, the harmful bacteria dies when the water evaporates.

Anyway, it just seems strange to me that adults are dependent on me (and people like me) to supply them with such a basic human need like safe drinking water.

UPDATE: Apparently a lot of local people do drink the tap water and are OK with it. It's just the hard water in Ozone is soooo salty that it's unpalatable.