Dear Diary,
Things that have become a simple everyday task here would be considered such a chore back home. Hand washing all our clothes every evening, scrubbing them until our hands our red raw, boiling the kettle about ten times to get enough water to fill the buckets,and also washing ourselves with a simple bucket and soap. Spending the evenings sitting on the porch for hours on end, watching the moon rise higher into the night sky. Walking 3km to school and 3km back everyday in the 40’c heat and under the scorching sun no loner seems a big deal.
Living without running water and at times, without electricity, is simply a way of life at this stage. In a land where water is precious and reigns all, its magnitude of importance is hard to comprehend. The town can ‘run out of internet’ and not bat an eyelid, everyone goes on as if nothing has happened, nothing of value has been lost. However, you take away water and life ceases to exist. The river has totally dried up, and all fish and plant life have disappeared.
One can see children as young as 4 or 5 carrying over sized canisters filled with water for miles on end, carrying the precious resource back to their village. Conservation of water is essential and their skill at maximizing utility couldn’t be better. We too are learning fast. Wash your body but not always your hair. Recycle that water by using to flush the toilet at the end of the day. Same goes when washing clothes – this powdery water can always be used again.
At home it is a simple commodity one takes for granted most of our lives. We throw it away, flush it, take hour long baths or showers, fill up swimming pools or hot tubs, use it to water our gardens. But have we, have YOU, ever thought about life without water? Would we survive? Probably not, considering 2 billion people all over the world are suffering from a variety of illnesses, many life threatening, due to lack of access to water on a daily basis.
Here, water is sacred.
Hi! I’m Janet Newenham, an Irish-born digital nomad and blogger. My blog, Journalist On The Run, is a journal of my travels and career hurdles, as well as a “bucket list for life.” In my youth, reading inspired me to create and achieve goals for my future.
My long list of goals took me to places I could never have dreamed of, each one inspiring me toward the next. Along the way, I picked up a few awards like “Digital Media Travel Journalist Of The Year” in both 2017 and 2019 while simply doing what I love.
Now, well into my 30s, I’ve seen so many of the world’s alcoves that it would be wrong not to share my experiences with you. This blog is my way of taking you around the world with me, and I hope you enjoy the ride.
My goal was to visit 50 countries before I hit 30. I never imagined that at 37, I could proudly say I’ve seen 101 of the world’s beautiful countries. Of course, no matter how much you think you’ve traveled, there is still so much left to see, and I look forward to going on the run with you.
lrntn
Thursday 22nd of March 2012
Good reminder ... I know someone in Los Angeles here who founded this wonderful organization that raises money for wells in countries like Burkina Faso. Hope you don't mind me putting her link here, just in case anyone wants to find out more. http://www.wellsbringhope.org/home.php
intrepidtraveller
Wednesday 11th of April 2012
Sems like a great cause/organization. Thanks for sharing the link! x
wellsforzoe
Friday 30th of December 2011
Wow!! What a blog. Clean safe drinking is our passion at Wells for Zoe, in Northern Malawi and just a start in Zambia. After 6 years spending half our time there we know what is is to be without water for days on end, even though we live in the city and have water on tap (a bit better recently). We make simple plastic pumps in our factory and enable villagers to install them. They dig the wells, up to 19 metres deep, by hand, build the bricks, make the cover. We come up with the cement and the pump, of course. I'm not great on numbers, but clean water to about 125,000 rural villagers and plans for that many more in the next three years. We are also in to conservation farming and preschools in remote areas. You are very welcome to come to Mzuzu anytime. We even have a place for you to stay, with water, and even 4 working showers. Be careful and have a ball
intrepidtraveller
Friday 30th of December 2011
Wow your projects sounds amazing...what a great job you are doing, fair play! Clean water for about 125,000 villagers is a HUGE ACHIEVEMENT! I look forward to exploring your blog a but more and maybe even getting the chance to come visit Malawi some day. Janet
Capn Dyke
Friday 30th of December 2011
Do ye then wish ye could be granted th'wish t'make th'Plenty o' th'World available t'all - regardless o'socioeconomic standin'? Aye, me too.
intrepidtraveller
Friday 30th of December 2011
Hey Pirate! Yeah I know it's wishful thinking but I think it's good to even open our minds and at least think about these things, even if solving these problems is a monstrous task!
Sylver Blaque
Friday 30th of December 2011
I love that you post things like this for us to think about. Something so simple, so taken for granted by some can be supremely complicated, if not impossible, for those in another part of the world. I witnessed the same issue in Haiti just after the quake, but their issue was getting clean water for drinking. There was never enough. Not ever. No matter how much was provided by the relief orgs, there was never enough to go around. But that was because of the quake. In Africa, it's every day of life for whole lifetimes. Really puts the haves, have-somes, and have-nots into perspective. Really great post.
intrepidtraveller
Friday 30th of December 2011
Wow I imagine Haiti must have been an amazing experience. we have learnt a lot about it in our classes, as many of our lecturers went out there to do initial assessments after the earthquake. 7 litres a day is supposed to be the absolute minimum per person but that is often impossoble to achieve. Water quality is also so important in preventing the spread of disease, while there may be water there is no guarantt that it is clean. :(
Andreas Moser
Thursday 29th of December 2011
The amount of water on our planet is actually always the same (unless we shoot some of it into space).
Richard Heider
Friday 30th of December 2011
Andreas, I do not agree because we talk 'drinking water' not H2O. (Even with H2O, you can split it up, but granted, taken the size of the oceans it does not matter.)
If you flush you toilette you just transformed 10 liters of drinking water into non drinking water. You poison a lake a lot of liters are gone. I guess you get the point.
intrepidtraveller
Thursday 29th of December 2011
Really? I didn't know that. Even so, it is not evenly distributed so many people in areas such as drought prone Africa have to survive on much less water than we do in the developed western world. The problem isn't, at times anyway, availability of water but ACCESS to said water.