मुझको पानी पीना था

That there title translates as "I had to drink the water". Which I did. Had no choice, actually. See, it goes like this:

I think I've mentioned that one of the things I've come here to do is to spay and neuter some of the local street dogs, which are fairly numerous. While some of the people around here actually do keep dogs as personal pets, most of the dogs just live from handouts or what garbage they can find on the street. In this little town it's actually a pretty decent life for most of them. They play with the local kids, get a fair bit of attention, and are generally quite friendly. But they also keep making babies, which becomes a bit of a public health problem as the population grows.

Anyway, with Nyondo working on things from this end, we managed to catch the attention of the area animal husbandry officials, who offered to help with some of our supply needs and who are providing us with some work space to do this. Of course, this required going over the mountains to Mandi, the district capital (think county seat), yesterday to meet with said officials. And at each meeting, we were brought glasses of water to drink. From tap.

Under the circumstances, it would have been a very impolite thing for me not to drink any. So while I didn't drain my glass at any point, I did drink enough to be polite. Which was a little bit worrisome, as I'd had some mild GI issues that morning, but as I said, I didn't feel I had a real option in the matter. Fortunately, the Pepto and the Chinese herbal pills Lena had given me seemed to work well, as I didn't suffer any further ill effects. And now I feel a little more comfortable with drinking the water, even though I plan to continue being somewhat careful.

Anyway, I don't really have any photos on hand of that, but I do have a couple of the town that I took from way up here on the hillside, just to give folks an idea of the view. This one is a poorly stitched together panorama (definitely click to embiggen):



And this is one I took of the right side of the lake from up on the roof yesterday evening:



I also took a few today that I need to upload, including some I hope to use to make a better stitched-together panorama, but now I need to go see if any assistance is needed in preparing dinner.