WRITTEN BY: ERYN AUSTIN-BERGEN
Turn water on.
Get wet as fast as possible.
Turn water off.
Shampoo hair and soap body.
Turn water on.
Rinse as fast as possible.
Turn water off.
Exit shower.
Soap sponge.
Squish a few times to make froth and foam.
Put stopper in sink.
Scrub as many dishes as possible, placing carefully in empty
sink until no more fit.
Turn on water to a drizzle.
Rinse dishes into stopped sink.
Turn water off.
Use sink water to wash remaining dishes.
Turn water on.
Rinse dishes as fast as possible.
Turn water off.
Use sink water for remainder of day to get food off hands,
soak stubbornly crusty dishes, wipe counters, etc.
Place cup under faucet.
Turn water on.
Fill cup.
Turn water off.
Drink deep of the liquid gold you never appreciated so much.
My family and I recently arrived in the Cape Town area of
South Africa at the tale end of a severe three year
drought. We quickly adopted new routines when it came to showering,
washing dishes, brushing teeth, and flushing toilets (“If it’s yellow let it
mellow; if it’s brown flush it down”). At first, our three-year-old daughter
struggled perhaps more than my husband and me.
She loves water.
Having spent her entire life in the Lower Mainland of
British Columbia where water seems in never-ending supply, she has a hard time
understanding why she has to turn off the tap in between wetting her hands,
soaping them, and rinsing them. Back “home” we had so much rain that we complained
about it most of the time (with the exception of two peak summer months when we
weren’t allowed to water lawns because of the summer “drought”).
In the winter months, Eliana put on her boots and rain
jacket and squealed in delight as she jumped and splashed in the massive
puddles on our neighbour’s driveway. She also inexplicably stood under the
drain pipe that gushed freezing water off our roof and got soaked to the bone. And she loved it.
In the summer months she delighted to play with the outdoor
hose, splash in her backyard kiddie pool, and take prolonged showers. When I
think about it now, it’s absurd how much water we let her waste, but in that
context, it was normal.
Here in South Africa, using that much water is anything but
normal. In fact, water wastage is viewed almost as criminal. So, it’s been a
big adjustment for Eliana. But after a few weeks of shouting for her to turn
off the water and threatening various consequences for wasting water, she is
now becoming the water police in our home. “Mom, you didn’t turn off the water
when you brushed your teeth. That’s wasting water. You get a time out.” Dang
it! Busted again.
To be totally honest, I’m the one struggling now. I just
really, really want to take a long, hot shower. I want to let the water run for
20 minutes to soothe my sore muscles after a long day out or walking the
groceries home by hand. I want to – dare I say it out loud? – take a bath! Oh,
to soak in a lavender bath after a stressful day! But alas, I can’t even
imagine using that many litres on such a trivial luxury.
To make the situation even more acute, the apartment complex
we live in recently installed water meters. It’s a whole new level of
obsession. I regularly check our water usage for the day and dutifully record
it every evening. I then chastise our household (i.e. my husband) for how much
water we’ve consumed and insist that we use less (although, as the person who
washes most of the dishes in our home, I know that I’m the biggest culprit when
it comes to water wastage). Not only does the water meter tell us how much
we’ve used, its rapid and steady countdown tells me how many litres we have
left before I have to go to the store and buy more water. Ouch.
For millions of people in Africa, though, this is par for
the course. They’ve been conserving water for generations. While much of the
continent is covered in lush rain forests, dense jungles, and rushing rivers,
access to water is a perennial problem for everyone. Collection and storage of
water has traditionally been a manual task – women and girls walk
considerable distances to fill jugs (clay or plastic) and haul them home
balanced on their heads or slung over their backs. It’s hard work. When they
get the water home, every drop is precious. It’s needed for washing, cooking,
drinking, bathing, watering domestic livestock, and more.
In addition to struggling to access water, families on the
continent are struggling to find sources of clean water. Rivers and open wells
are often contaminated with intestinal parasites that make the whole family
sick. Children are disproportionately affected – being so young (and sometimes
malnourished) their little bodies just aren’t strong enough to fight off
infection. They miss school, miss playtime, and in the worst cases, end up in
clinics, hospitals, or succumb to the sickness altogether. According
to the World Health Organization “a lack of water and poor quality
water increases the risk of diarrhoea, which kills approximately 2.2 million
people [globally] every year”. That’s a seriously sobering statistic.
For those living where water itself, not just access to
water, is scarce, the challenge is doubly extreme. Not only do people struggle
to access water (forget clean water),
they constantly live in fear of the sources drying up. And they do. Wells stop
producing. Rivers run dry. The rains fail. The Global Water Institute estimates
that 700 million people
worldwide could be displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030.
That’s barely over 10 years from now. And it’s not only subsistence farmers in
South Sudan or Ethiopia that are impacted; water scarcity affects populations
on every inhabited continent.
While the
poor do suffer disproportionately from climate change-induced water
scarcity, as the people of the Western Cape have been learning, it will
eventually catch up to all of us. No amount of money was going to save Cape
Town from Day Zero. When there’s no water left, there’s just no water left.
And that’s a pretty scary reality.
But as far as I can tell, fear is rarely an effective,
long-term motivator. Sure, people will adjust their behaviour when under
pressure, when they can see impending doom drizzling reluctantly out of their
taps. But as soon as the pressure is off, we forget. In time, we will forget
the pain of the drought and water wastage will become normal, again. The threat
of water scarcity, however, will not evaporate.
Fear will not save the world from running out of water.
But love might.
If we learn to love the girl walking two kilometers each way
to haul home parasite-infected water on her back instead of going to school, we
might change our attitudes and make water conservation a permanent lifestyle.
If we learn to love the mother desperately eking out every
last drop of this precious, life-giving resource, we might turn off the tap
when we brush our teeth.
If we learn to love our own neighbourhoods and want to see
them thrive far into the future, we might forget taking a bath, pressure-washing
the deck, or running a half-empty load of laundry.
If we learn to love, we might learn to change.
But is turning off the tap between shampooing and rinsing
our hair in the shower really enough? Is changing personal habits going far
enough to really loving our family, our neighbour, our world? If love is what
we’re aiming for, maybe we need to consider going a step further.
Maybe we could try opening our hearts and our pockets to put
our money where our love is.
Maybe we could help bring that singular source of water two
kilometers closer to that eight-year-old girl. Maybe we could help create
access to clean water that will dramatically reduce childhood illness in her
village, raise school attendance, promote economic activity, and show those
struggling with water scarcity that we love them and truly believe we’re in
this together.
Water shortage is not an African problem; it’s a global
threat. It’s not a problem of poverty; it’s a matter of overconsumption by all
of us. But if we wait until we are directly affected to make changes, it’s
going to be too late. Let’s cultivate love for our global neighbours and next-door
neighbours today – for our planet and for the future. Let’s begin changing our personal
habits while also reaching out to become part of the global solution.
SUPPORT CLEAN WATER PROJECTS
SUPPORT CLEAN WATER PROJECTS
