You probably haven’t considered this before, but tribal missionaries nowadays are often required to have very large bladders. I mean seriously HUGE bladders. And they have to be durable too. You certainly don’t want to experience leakage out in the bush!
Well, I didn’t know this before heading to PNG, so I went over completely unprepared (how embarrassing). While we’ve been back in the States for this maternity leave though, I’ve been trying to rectify the situation. And it looks like I’ve finally done it: I now have a bladder capable of holding 10,000 liters!
All I have to do is work out the shipping details, because…hold on…you seem confused. You realize I’m talking about the water bladder that we’ll be using to store all our water in out in the bush, right? Wait…what were YOU thinking?!
See, since we’ll be living a kajillion miles away from the nearest town, and drilling a well is way too much work, we’ll be collecting rainwater from our roof and using it for our household water. Normally, our area gets quite a bit of rain, so the system is pretty reliable, but for a 4-6 week stretch towards the end of the summer things often lean more towards the “bone-dryish” end of the spectrum, so we need a water storage solution that will keep us covered during that time.
Thanks to modern synthetics and polymers, and the helpful people at FlexiMake, it looks like our needs have been met! This water bladder option is especially conducive to our situation and our “off the beaten path” location, since the whole set-up will fit in a box about the size of a large microwave, and it will only weigh around 100 lbs! Because all of our supplies have to come in via helicopter, this is awesome!
Now, all we have to do is get it shipped over to our support center, sent in to our bush location, and have some friends hook it up for us, so it can start collecting water before we move in. I can’t wait. There’s just something comforting about having a full bladder out in the bush.
