prickly fruit.

Not far from our house is a park. The park has some near fountains and statues in it. Around the edges there are quite a few trees. They looked like some kind of birch or willow to me with whitish bark but the lower sections were pretty rough like an Elm. They had big leaves that look like elm leaves but which are really big. Here last week we noticed these little things growing on the trees. some old dried ones are on the ground we had never noticed before and they open up like a clam when they dry. Inside is a pit like a peach. Nope I have no idea what they are.

In town they have been working on the streets. It seems that the storm drains filled with sludge this spring when there was heavy rains and that led to some flooding. So now they are digging up the old ones and replacing them with new ones. The new ones look a lot like the old ones so We are not exactly sure what the point is but the work goes on. I am not sure the real name of the drains Our friend Bruce called the Juuies when we visited him years

ago in another central asian country so we adopted the name. They are like city wide irrigation ditches. Water flows through them most of the time and people use them for washing cars or irrigating there yards or trees. They also seem to use them for litter removal. I guess that is why they are plugged.

People seem to think that there is an unlimited supply of water even though it seems that the agricultural development of the country is limited by access to water. Every apt we looked at had at least one if not all the faucets and toilet leaking water constantly. We are told that the parts to fix them cost more than the water will so just to let them run. That is just wrong to us so we keep buying washers and new fixtures to try to stop the flow.

Water is always an issue. In Russia we used a little Katadyn camp water filter. We probably didn't need to but our friends said we should do something so we did. It lasted the entire time we were there. We changed the filter once as we thought it needed it. Our water here ruined the element and ceramic stone within 20 gallons. There are some really fine minerals in the water. Our little pump filtered to .3 micron that is pretty fine. But as we cant get more filters here we have had to look for another option. There are Indian filters available here for about $30 which seems cheep. On line we read that their elements may use Arsenic to kill bacteria and that it may be good to avoid that. We had thought of buying one and then getting Us or Swiss elements for it. Last week we went

to check on them and there on the shelf were enough Swiss elements for one unit. So we bought the set and put it together. Of course nothing ever is as easy as it should be so we had to get creative to keep the valve in the housing as the threads and the nut that were supposed to do that job were not a match. Some teflon tape and packaging it came in did the trick though and it is not leaking so far. The shiny can seems to remove the dirt okay and kill the bugs in the water okay but the water has a bad taste and smell after it passes through the filter. Life goes on. We will see if it is the water or the filter.

If you live where you can drink the public water from the tap without thinking about it. Thank the guys responsible. That one fact puts you in about the richest 5% of the people in the world. The danger is having so much is you forget what life would be like without it. I saw a spot the other day that Cuba has started requesting farmers use Mules as that saves gas. Think about that. What would food cost if we returned to farming with mules.

ST