Hi Jeff. It would be good if it were funny, or insightful, but it's not. It's a story about how awful a place Maputo is, with a hint of incongruous, misplaced Schadenfreude. I note how low the IQ evident in these replies is, compared with the usual DM comment thread, which implies I shouldn't be wasting my time, but I'll bite in the interest of public-spiritedness.

Never, ever try to clean infected water with charcoal alone.

"Microbes, nitrates, and fluoride are examples of contaminants that cannot be filtered effectively using active carbon."

"Many of the organic compounds which active carbon filtration removes encourage the presence of bacteria." http://www.thomasnet.com/articles/chemicals/activated-carbon-filtration

In other words, charcoal (being carbon) is *worse than nothing* for getting rid of bacteria. 

I won't bother with the remark about charity except to note that charity requires having something to give away in the first place.