Water

The drinking water in Kaolack is, well, undrinkable. At least when meeting my inflated Western standards. There's salt in it. And probably a whole host of parasites that cause a variety of corporeal discomforts. This is unfortunate considering Kaolack is hot. The kind of sticky heat that suffocates you in your sleep. If Queen Mab even grants you entrance to that nether region. And when the power goes out and the fan stops working and the malaria invested night yields no refuge, not only is quenching your thirst predicated by your ability to afford bottled water but taking a cold shower means dousing in sodium. Your skin starts to itch within days.

I wish I had more time to research the causes of Kaolack's water problem. There are salt flats mere kilometers out side of town that are exploited. By whom, I'd like to find out. I doubt many local Senegelse profit from the salt cultivation here.

Currently, I know merely what many of us know, that water poverty is a stark and forever growing fact of our future, that "while a handful of the wealthy routinely drink expensive, high function mineral water, one out of five people in the world cannot count on getting any safe drinking water at all" (Japan Focus, Tomoko Sakuma).