I have been looking for ways to make distilled water without electricity or making a complicated solar still. I thank you for your great suggestion. Here is another one I found last night but have no idea where (hope it wasn't on the CS list).
"Well, if it was me, and I was in Africa, I'd probably try a solar still to distill my own water. You'd need a large clean container to hold the water to be distilled, say a large kettle with an inch or so of water in the bottom. In the center of the large kettle put a smaller clean container, say a drinking glass. Now cover the kettle with clean plastic sheeting, and place a small weight, like a stone in the center of the plastic so that the weight of the stone makes the plastic droop down to a point, directly over the smaller container. Set this whole contraption out in the sun and let it cook. If you've set it up right, the heated water in the kettle will condense on the inside of the cooler plastic. The condensation will coalesce and run down to where the stone is and drip into the smaller vessel in the center of the kettle. This sounds like a slow process, but if the sun is really hot you'll be surprised how much it will make in a day."
