With a month to go before the ‘Amble in Rwanda’ there has been much cross continent online chatter and organisation. The excitement level is ramping up as Rose and Wandering Man go through the pre-contemplative and contemplative faffing stages of change.

Our previous experience in Nepal had led us to be quite blasé about the water quality we would experience on wanders, such that we never used our water filter and rarely needed to purify our water. However, a fairly brief perusal of several African health websites drained that kind of complacency right out of our systems. Long lists of water borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio, which kill 115 people per hour in Africa, populate both the information and water sources. Dire warnings about bacteria, viruses, parasites and pollution abound.

Happily, recently the water purification business appears to have advanced somewhat rapidly with a huge range of easy to use systems around. Most of them involve sucking dirty water through straws encased in filters within water bottles. The variety is overwhelming. In our choice paralysis world, what to do?

Rose identified the most expensive of these and decided to go for what is a version of these systems but ‘sans straw’, instead involving the French Press coffee filter system. This seemed entirely appropriate, given the colonial history of Rwanda and French/Belgian influences still around. Not to be outdone, we decided to pair up and we are now both owners of a Grayl Geopress Purifier (no endorsement). These promise to remove ‘waterborne pathogens (virus, bacteria, protozoan cysts), pesticides, chemicals, heavy metals, and even microplastics‘ including ‘Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Norovirus, Giardiasis, Cryptosporidium, E. Coli, Cholera, Salmonella, Dysentery and more‘ with a mere 8 second push of the filter through any old murky liquid you can scoop up into your water bottle. The added benefit seems to be that you can drink great glugs of pure water direct from the bottle, rather than sucking small drops through a straw. Who needs straws? They are for babies and adolescents aren’t they?

That’s the water thing sorted then.