So you know how you open your fridge to grab your water pitcher and pour yourself a nice glass of cold H2O- water, de l’eau, ndox? Or maybe you go right from the tap and fill a glass because doing so will not give your stomach any reason to get angry. What a fortunate state of affairs this is, that almost all Americans do not have to make room in their kitchens for this stainless steel rolling hulk of American-made beauty:

Meet my water distiller

Now before I tell you about the water fight that I had in my kitchen this afternoon, let me just say that I drink the water from my Dakarois tap quite often here, sans problème. I don’t have to use my water distiller, but unfounded visions of me developing some sort of long-range kidney stone issue compels me to use it anyway. I do, after all, buy a lot of Sugar Free Purple Kool-Aid drink mix (which will probably kill me faster than the kidney stones….)

So a water distiller needs to be cleaned periodically. I have the chemicals required to clean it, and even a handy Durastill owner’s manual that must, somewhere, tell you how to marry up the distiller with these bottles of granules:

Still Sweet and Still Clean.  Sweet names, so as to give the impression that descaling my machine is going to be a fun evolution…

I’m really not joking when I say I have a public school education. As it turns out, figuring out how to clean my distiller was not as simple as following the directions that say “it is important to clean the evaporation tank every week or you will drink contaminated water”- or whatever vague threat that the manual levied upon me.

Whatever. I’m going to clean this thing, because I’m a good American who does what she is supposed to with property that doesn’t belong to her. I even created a checklist this morning to guilt myself into not putting this cleaning event off any longer.  

So in order to start the process, how the hell do you break into this metal beast? The manual as it turns out, while extra descriptive in its line drawing, fails to give me an Ikea-style pictorial on how to open it up. In retrospect it’s all a bit obvious, but still it took me awhile to decide that I wasn’t going to get this bolted down top part thing open without suffering steam burns:

There’s residue in there that will likely kill me. Or maybe just make my water taste grainy. Or maybe do nothing at all, kinda like those extended warranties people get for toasters.

I’m not going to bore you with a step-by-step testimonial on how I cleaned my distiller.  After all, I’m not even sure if I did it properly- and furthermore, reliving my afternoon of toil is already boring me in this blog entry. But I’ll continue:

 Look close and you’ll see that there is something that this distiller is extracting. I’m thinking of straining it, laying it out to dry in the African sun, then bagging it up to sell on a round plate that will be atop my head as I walk to school each day.

 Doing what I do best. Making a mess and not really caring in the process.

 Note to Megan: Draining the distiller is a much less painful process when you wait for the water to cool down from boiling point. But hey, my floor got a nice fresh water wash down.

So I’m done. You can tell because I broke out the towels. Dakar’s rainy season has got nothing on Megan’s ability to soak her surroundings.

So will I or won’t I be henceforth drinking water that is contaminated as a result of my own incompetence? Time will tell, as will the flavor of my purple Kool-Aid. It’s a win-win situation actually; check out what I spied by my house on the way home the other day:

It’s a sign for sure. Why else would I not have noticed this until I had just gotten back from Ireland? If I can’t drink from my distiller, I’ll be rolling down to this bar and seeking a suitable substitute.

(Incidentally I’ll bet the Guinness here tastes awful. Guess I have two more years to find out.)