Well, as I write this I have been without running water for over twelve hours now. The main water pipeline supplying this sector of the city broke early this morning and in typical Mozambican fashion it is being 'swiftly' attended to. Luckily, I guess, I had the smart idea to fill up three empty 5 gallon jugs of water with tap water for just such an eventuality. However, i was surprised just how much water one can go through in a day. I am now down to half of my reserve, and despite the guard's assertion outside that the water access has been restored, I find myself without any running water.
It is one of those moments where you catch yourself in true North American (and particularly Ontarian) mode. Your usual standards of cleanliness and water consumption habits that you are used to really stand out. The most simplest of tasks and functions become articles of calculation: how much to use to brush your teeth; wash your face, hair and other body parts; should i have coffee or tea in the morning or stick to just milk and other packaged drinks; what food can I eat that is going to utilize the least water; how much mess will it make and will it start attracting uninvited critters; what to do with the laundry that i need to get done; and my personal favorite where can i go to use the bathroom?
It has truly been a reflective day in these terms. Scarier still is that it has not even been 24 hours yet. Can u imagine now the millions of people who go through this ordeal every single day of their lives. Access to water becomes the most important daily activity, and coupled with all the other challenges they face, survival is their full time job. In such a context there is no room for anything else. No time to find meaningful sustained employment; no time for education; no time for play; no time for hobbies; no time for anything else that we all take for granted. How does development take place in such a context.
These of course are all things that one point or other have crossed all our minds. But having not had to go through the need, through the persistent absence of daily necessities, through the true act of survival, most of us can not realistically empathize. Neither can I claim to do so. Today, I solved my problems by grabbing a book and heading to a restaurant where my needs were catered for through my purchasing power. Most, and I mean the grand majority of people, are not so lucky.
You know when I moved into this building the gentlemen who helped me find the place gave me a suggestion for how to use the very large container out in my veranda behind the kitchen where the laundry are is. They said, "you may want to fill this up with water in case there is a water outage". Water Outage??? The thought of a large amount of stagnant water in a country where malaria is the disease that results in the largest amounts of deaths, did not exactly appeal to me. I may think differently if by tomorrow I wake up to dry tap.
Don't get me wrong, I am not panicking. Just beginning to feel that even I have severe underestimation and under appreciation for what life is like for %80 of the world's population. Even now, my greatest concern is to ensure that i can arrive to work tomorrow in presentable appearance.
I sincerely hope that those of you who may by chance read this, especially those lucky enough to be living in the water rich great lakes region where I am from, maybe pause for a moment and reflect as I have on just how abnormal it truly is to have access to and use water in the manner in which we do. Dare, if you may, to then make the correlation to how we consume most other resources in our lives. If it causes you some discomfort its OK. Its call dissonance, the self-realization of the conflict between the illusion of our perception when it collides with the enormity of our reality. The question is this: what will that sense of discomfort motivate you to do?
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1 comment:
BRUNO!
Dude, it really puts things into perspective when you think about not being able to have access to water. Oddly, i was at the grocery store today and bought 12 Litres (24 x 500ml bottles) of water for $2.99. You really do get accustomed to taking a necessity of life for granted. The weirdest part of the power outage (remember a few years back?) wasn't that people were hushed into accepting that power doesn't last forever and that we should conserve it, it was a huge boost in generator sales.
Hopefully people will start to realize what life is like in the remainder of the world. I doubt i will ever get it myself, but at least my eyes are open a little wider than they were yesterday.
Thanks bud!
Take care :)
(P.S. What do you think about the adoption of the American spelling of words through the default settings on spell checkers to use an American English dictionary. Think about it...)
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