Blog Action Day: Water

When I was young I used to brush my teeth in the shower. Somehow my teenage mind figured it was more efficient to combine showering with brushing. Bizarre but true. I'm almost ashamed to admit it now. This was back in the day when it was normal to leave the tap running while we brushed our teeth over the sink; when dad hosed down his car on his concrete driveway every single morning; when, in suburban Sydney, when water was ubiquitous, abundant and to be taken for granted.

Then came the drought - and water rationing. I learned all sorts of miserly habits with my water usage. I stopped washing the car and the one time I tried - using a bucket of recycled water - a passing motorist screamed out "Don't waste water!" I learned to get by with a lot less.

But it's all relative, isn't it. I once saw a film about a family living on the steppes in one of the Stans (Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan?) These people had nothing but a few camels, their home was a dry, barren plain and the scene from the film that is etched in my mind is of the mother cleaning up after their evening meal. The father and sons had each had a small bowl of rice. When they'd finished eating, the mother allowed herself to eat what was left over, and washing up consisted of her scraping each bowl clean with her fingers and licking off every last grain of food. That was her meal. The bowls were finally washed with a teaspoon-sized amount of something that had once been water.

I think of that woman every time I'm "making do" with my measly one inch of washing up water, and thinking about how to siphon it out afterwards to throw on the garden. I think about the women and children in Africa who's entire day's work is devoted to walking miles and miles to a well, collecting water and then slogging it back home again. They're risking their lives and their health for water that isn't even safe to drink, while I only need to walk as far as the sink. And I am reminded - to steal a phrase I read somewhere - of the lottery that is birth.

I will leave you with a link to a video for Unicef's Tap Project - Dirty Water vending machines. A smart campaign to demonstrate just how poor the water is for a large proportion of the world's population.

And this link to oxfam's Water for Life project:
http://www.oxfam.org.au/explore/water-sanitation-and-hygiene/features/water-for-life
This water themed post is a part of Blog Action Day 2010.