How many Mizos does it take....

This is my water filter.  There's at one in every house and many in the admin building.  In the admin building, there are one or two cups by which to take a drink of water.  Sharing cups is standard here, but somehow they manage to pour the water down their throats without their mouths touching the cup.  I have not mastered this skill at all.  Mostly I just get water all over me.  I carry my own bottle wherever I go.

All the water that is consumed here on campus is filtered.  I have been in only one house in town and it also has such a filter.  The water is apparently pumped from the river into city-wide reservoirs and then into huge cisterns on the roof.  Although Mizoram is the wettest state in India, there are seasons when the main source of water, the Tlawng River, is reduced to a mere stream.  There does not seem to be any effort to collect rain water in season. Just imagine all the energy required to pump the water up the hills and mountains and onto the roofs.  The water supply in Aizawl has been a long-term problem and there have been several projects to upgrade the system.

So the quality of the water is unsure and everyone drinks filtered water.  It took me a bit to figure out how the filter worked, mainly because the little switch at the tee connection under the sink was switched off, so the water wasn't flowing to the filter at all.  After that was righted, everything worked just fine, including the little song which plays while the water is flowing.  For some reason, Asian appliances are designed to make music.  When we were in Korea, the refrigerator played "Oh Susanna" if it was left open too long.

Everyone keeps extra bottles of water on the counter in the kitchen, used for drinking and cooking.  Initially, someone gave me two such plastic bottles and later two pitchers showed up.  But after about a week, I noticed a brown sediment in one of the bottles, so I asked to have the filtering machine checked.

On the first day, they sent the all-round handyman to the apartment.  He doesn't speak much English, but he turned the filter off and said, "Shop".  I assumed this meant he would go to the shop and retrieve some filter replacements.  I began toting my water from the filters in the admin building. About two days later, the registrar told me that there are many different kinds of filters and that the handyman would come back and take a picture of mine, so they would be sure that they had the correct one.  This he did.  The next day I was gone and someone came but I wasn't there to unlock the door.  (This has been something of a problem because there is no spare key to the giant lock which hangs on the outside of the door when it is shut.  When I arrived, I received 3 keys, but only one of them fit the lock.  This is a different story for a different day.)  The next day I came back immediately after class and there were three men, one boss and two workers, waiting for me, to see about the filter.

In spite of the fact that they had the pictures of the machine, they murmured about this and that and what the brand name really was.  The boss spoke good English and told me they had to get the right filters and that they would come back the next day.  I told him I would not move from my apartment until I saw his face.  Within an hour, the two workers came back with the correct filters and changed them.

And not a minute too soon.  Of the two replacements, one was white in color and the other brown.  The two filters they took out were black and there were black molecules swimming in the excess water in the filter.  I ran the first 2 liters without drinking it, but I am back in drinking water again.