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I'm tapping this out at home with the sloshing of our washing machine in the background.

That's a noise Andrew would love to hear.

In just a couple of weeks in Tanzania, I really learned to appreciate the fact that I have clean, reliable water right in my own home. I can wash clothes, drink from the tap, take a shower whenever I want.

It isn't that way where Andrew lives outside Mwanza, and I doubt it will be that way when he moves to another location across the country soon.

Few people in Tanzania have access to good water.

You'd think there would at least be plenty of water in Mwanza, which sits on the shore of one of the biggest lakes in the world. Not so. Andrew's water (he has a tap in his small enclosed yard behind his house, another in his detached kitchen and a commode and shower in his detached bathroom) runs only a few hours a day. And it's not safe to drink. I wasn't really satisfied that it was safe even for taking a shower, so I limited mine to about 30 seconds.

When the water is on, Andrew fills up several 20-liter buckets. He boils and filters water for drinking. When he washes dishes, he has to rinse them in a tub of water treated with chlorine. Then he uses the leftover rinse water for the toilet. He does the same for clothes washing, which of course he does by hand. Water can't be wasted.

Our routine in the evening was to sit and wait for the water to come on, then wash any dirty dishes, use the toilet and try to get a shower. Sometimes the water would come on about 9, sometimes 10, sometimes 11, sometimes not at all.

It's frustrating to come back to the house in late afternoon, a little sweaty and dusty, and not have water to wash up with. You just never get really clean.

Yet, somehow, Tanzanians themselves are very clean people. Andrew says they typically take a couple of bucket showers every day. They must be very spare with water to accomplish that. Yet the evidence is undeniable. Their clothes are clean and neat and, as I can attest from being crammed in the dala dalas with 25-plus Tanzanians at a time, they don't smell.

Water is precious. Tanzanians make a little go a long way. Unused to doing that, I really missed not being able to use as much as I want. I'll try not to take it for granted from now on.