Kolmanskop has plenty of ruins, but the engineer’s house is the only one that has lost its roof entirely. It stands up the hill, with a chimney and a lone telephone pole for company on the horizon.

The roof is not the interesting part. Kolmanskop had no fresh water source, so drinking water came by ship from Cape Town, then by railway, and was kept in a rusty tank and a round basin nearby. The children, naturally, took over a rectangular cement basin as a swimming pool. The adults gave in, added a diving board and even a fireplace to warm the water.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tour of Kolmanskop uses this stop to explain how a diamond town kept itself supplied, and why its residents, who left in 1956, never tasted the groundwater found in 1930.