On the Virtues of Cement and Water Taps

I travelled to Chicualacuala District last week (say... Sheekwalakwala), one of the most remote districts in the country-  8 hours or 600km on a bumpy dirt road.  You can put it in Google maps and see that it's pretty near the end of the world..It was great to be out of the city and in the middle of nowhere.  As it usually goes on these trips, it was me travelling with Mozambican men.  Luckily, I know how to deal with Mozambican men pretty well. 
Chicualacuala is on the border with Zimbabwe, and at its peak, it must have been quite a place. It was a big station on the railway that connects South Africa to Harare, via Maputo.  Now it reminds me of some of the Old West ghost towns we visited in Colorado when I was little.  You can see shells and remnants of luxury hotels, swimming pools, nice restaurants, but now these are just decaying shells.  The climate is very arid, so there is plenty of sand and dust. 
One of the most difficult things to find in Chicualacuala is water.  The Mozambique Railroad Authority decided to paint the city's old watertower, which now looks very beautiful, but unfortunately, it's not functioning-- I was the only one in our group who saw the irony in this.  All the people in the town have to haul carts to get water from a well at the border post-- and the water there is salty. 
The border post is funny because you'd never know you were at a border, save for a piece of wire and the asphalt that starts on the Zim side, and 5 border officials sitting under a thatched hut.  During the whole time I was there (24 hours), I saw only 2 other cars...  so it seems the border post is fully staffed!
Anyway, I began to re-think about cement and water taps in Africa while I was there.  To me, these are now two of the most important things in life.  Imagine life without cement!  In Africa, there are many places like this... and if it's dry, you are usually sweating and covered from head to toe in dust-- like a piece of chicken that's battered, breaded and waiting to get fried.  And if it's raining, you are muddy and sticky all the time- imagine if you have a toddler... crawling..  And a water tap.  I'm not talking about a well, because there is a huge difference between pouring water from a jerry can or dipping a cup in a water container and having a TAP.  The tap keeps your much cleaner-- try not using yours for a few hours only.
Our hotel in Chicualacuala had no tap.. anywhere.. and a shared bathroom.  Matias' parents house doesn't have a tap either, but a hotel is different because you have more people and you don't know how they are.  Sanitation? 
For that and other reasons, I was glad to get out of the hotel-- other reason that the rooms did not have good insultation.  I shot up in my bed in the middle of the night to hear this really loud snoring , like someone was in my room.  It turned out it was the guy next door and he was just snoring VERY loudly... my colleagues all heard it too.
We cannot find the cord to our camera or else I'd start putting pictures here... hopefully it's in the container?  All for now... we went camping at the Maputo Elephant Reserve last weekend, so more on that in the next post.