25 Minutes

A 5 liter bottle for the house,

A 1.5 liter bottle for me.

Another 1. 5 liter bottle for Conor.

And another for Wendy.

Wendy and Michelle have “reusable” water bottles, so 700ml each for those.

That is roughly the amount of water we, the Pathfinders Pack, drink a day. And so that is the amount of purified drinking water we need to produce per day.

A total of 10.9 liters….. Plus drips and spills and mis-measures, so closer to 12 liters….

12 liters per day must be purified.

We use a SteriPEN provided to us by Michelle. This remarkable gadget uses UV to purify water, dismembering the DNA of the would-be pathogens with its 254 nm shine. The SteriPEN has 2 settings, one for 500 milliliters, and one for 1 liter. Our processing time sped up after I made a 1 liter “beaker” using an old 1.5 liter bottle, a 300mL bottle, a pocket knife, and math reminiscent of 3rd grade.

The SteriPEN takes 90 seconds for a 1 liter batch, and so purification for our 12 liters takes 18 minutes of pure UV light-show. 18 minutes of 90 second batches separated by pouring out the purified water into a more suitable container, and pouring in water from a jerrycan.

It works out to about 25 minutes to purify all the drinking water for a day.

Michelle and I do the bulk of the water purification, and so we will spend that 25 minutes chatting…. Or arguing….

More than once, I have been unable to sleep and will spend that 25 minutes in the middle of the night, listening to Skeptically Speaking, or jamming out to music to the light of the SteriPEN.

I may spend those 25 minutes reading wikipedia articles, or pursuing through lab reports or microbiology textbooks on my ipad.

And sometimes I will just spend those 25 minutes in silence, reflecting on the day, or myself, or my path…. And thinking…. Contemplating….. Dreaming….

25 minutes to keep us drinking purified water. 25 minutes to prevent the local bacteria from colonizing our guts.

25 minutes to prevent hours over the squat toilet.

A necessary 25 minutes…

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