Birdwatcher, Did you get sick much from having gone native, so to speak? I do enjoy your stories of travel and adventure.
Peace Corps says boil all your water. I was in a time and place where that was impractical/borderline impossible. Half the year rainwater was abundant right off of the roof, in the Dry Season (our winter) I was saved by a reliable spring back in the woods.
The thing is with most waterborne diseases is that humans gotta put 'em in, nobody lived upstream of me so I chanced it, drank it straight, sometimes cloudy, sometime with little critters in it and all. Seems like I got away with it. Though in the last severe dry season of '82/'83 I had to walk two miles up the mountain every evening to the next village for drinking water where serendipitously a German team had just come through and drilled a borehole well.
(Those German guys were there for TWO DAYS putting in that well and my students from there never mentioned it. I was irritated, I probably coulda cadged all kinds of sympathy beers and such from those guys).
Everybody gets giardia, you have it all the time, its a minor irritation. Everybody gets malaria, at least in theory, back then you kept it knocked back with 500mg (??) of chloroquine phosphate every Saturday (so you'd remember to take 'em). Two bitter little pills, don't leave home without 'em or you'll be dead inside of six months.
Worst I got was one time I was laid up with a splitting headache dry-heaving green water for three days while experiencing minor hallucinations. Never was diagnosed; some anonymous virus.
Living in that time and place, doing what I was doing, absolutely friggin' rocked. I taught young folks at a boarding school (they all are) who were very serious about getting an education (the alternative was a lifetime of drudgery on the farm) and on weekends and school holidays I worked with a Dutch Methodist mobile vaccination team, driving vehicles, compiling records and maintaining vaccine guns.
Came back after three years. Longer'n that and the malaria drugs could begin to mess up your liver, eyesight and hearing. Also, the longer you stay the less mainstream American you become, you get out of touch, it was time to come back.
Birdwatcher