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Random Thoughts Thursday part 8
The "Privilege" of Water
Recently, I wrote a forum post with the same title, and the thoughts impacted me so much that I felt it was worth blogging about as well. Forgive me while I paraphrase my words from the forum and add some more ideas to this blog.
There had been a problem with the water pipes in my building for 3 days, leaving my main bathroom, the one with a shower, without water. I am fortunate enough that I have a second small bathroom with a toilet and a sink and water in my kitchen, so, although it was not ideal, I was still able to function in my apartment. The discomfort of breaking my shower routine really got me thinking about people who don't have the "luxury" of enjoying a hot shower. In my experience, I have gone without water in various situations. There may be infrastructure issues that cause the disruption of water flow for a few hours or sometimes a few days, but these crises happen once every few years or even once every decade, and there is ALWAYS a "workaround" to have access to clean drinking water. When I was without water in my home, I could easily visit a friend with water or go out to a restaurant to have access to what I needed. In the WORST-case scenario, I could buy fresh drinking water from the store. It is annoying, but not a life-or-death crisis.
Small-town, Bulgaria 25 years ago...
In 1998, in a small town in Bulgaria, I was FORTUNATE enough to experience a REAL water challenge, and I understood for the first time how small my "first world problems" really were. I was 20 years old and visiting a town (which operated much like a village since everyone knew everyone else) with a population of 1864 people during an unusually hot and dry summer. The home where I was staying was without water for three days. Here were the options: pay for a bus and ride 20 minutes to the next town over to buy enough bottled water day by day, or hike about an hour to a natural spring to fill water bottles to haul to the family I was staying with day by day. I was young, strong, and adventurous. I opted for the popular FREE option the family wanted me to try, and I hauled as much water as I could tote for 3 days. I will NEVER forget the lessons I learned about water on this trip. It changed my entire mindset about how "wasteful" my frugal self was with even my best efforts, and it changed how I interacted with my environment from that day forward. For one thing, I learned a lot about sustainable living and gardening. (See "Random Thought Thursday part 5" blog post for more details about my garden.)
When faced with the task of hauling the amount of water you will need for a given day, you really pay attention to how much you depend on water and how much you use for each task. It is important to have enough fresh water to drink on a hot summer day, so that was the primary focus. Fortunately for me, the woman I was staying with was wonderful about storing fresh-made juices from her garden produce, so we could simply water down her juices to stretch our water supply and quench our thirst. We still had other concerns that needed water: washing hands, brushing teeth, cooking, rinsing dishes, simplifying showering, and flushing toilets.
When you haul water for ALL that you will do, you start to get really creative with how you will preserve your water supply. First, your main goal is NOT to actually NEED water for as many tasks as possible. You learn to be more efficient and make fewer messes. Less water changes your daily routines and thinking patterns as you plan how you will complete the tasks of the day. If you don't need a dish to eat, it's better to skip it (eating outside where crumbs don't matter and consuming simple-to-eat foods is a great option), but if you really MUST use a dish, try not to create difficult-to-wash items. Use bread as a "liner" on the bottom of your plate so that any "runny food" doesn't get all over the plate when you eat. Eat all the food on the plate, leaving as little as possible on the plate, or scrape off any non-edibles like bones or stems into the trash. When you are ready to wash your dishes, make sure ALL the dishes you will wash are in the sink so that you can maximize the cleaning power of your process. I worked together with a second person when washing dishes. Step one: put a stopper in the sink so as not to waste a single drop of water. Next, you pour a little water over the dishes, which are spread out in the sink, and the sponge you will use. Add a little soap to the sponge and scrub off any food stuck to the dishes, making a pile of sudsy tableware. Now, here is the tricky part and why you need a partner: One person CAREFULLY and slowly pours a slow stream of water over the sink full of soapy dishes, while the other lifts one dish out under the stream one at a time to rinse the soap off while the water and soap mixture falls on the dishes below. Depending on the number of dishes, this should be done using 1-2 liters of water if you get really good at it. If you are REALLY a professional at this, you will catch all of this gray water to flush your toilet. Give yourself 10 points if you thought of this before reading this.
Stop for a minute. The weather is HOT. If you move, you will sweat. It's inevitable. Imagine your hands are full, carrying heavy water jugs with handles that, without fabric to wrap around them, threaten to cut into your skin. Consider taking on the weight of an EXTRA 1-2 liters of water in an already heavy backpack strapped to your back as you make your way down a mountain. Good. Now, how badly do you want a shower?
I was on vacation, and it was August and the summer sun was relentless. I wanted that shower. It had me contemplating, Just how much water do I NEED for a shower? I opted to carry down the mountain an extra liter for this. The place where I was staying was fully prepared for an event such as this. When taking this shower, I was very attentive to catching all the rinse water to use to flush the toilet. So, step one: place a large plastic tub within the regular bathtub to stand in while taking a "shower". Get all necessary items for said shower prepared and ready. With hair as thick as mine, forget about any hopes of washing it with shampoo. There is NO EARTHLY way to get all that soap washed out with one liter of water. Alrighty then, ready? Washcloth in hand? Stand in the tub within a tub and take the most careful shower known to man. Once complete, transfer that gray water to a bucket. Count your blessings; you will be able to flush the toilet... ONCE, but no worries; since I wasn't drinking the level of water I wanted and was sweating a lot of it out anyway, I didn't need the toilet as much as usual. TMI? Well, sorry about that. Moving on.
Cooking became simplified. It was just too impractical to try to go all out with a limited amount of water. So, it was time to reach into the reserves of homemade jarred fruits and vegetables. Whatever could be eaten by hand without a pot or pan became really important during this time. Cheese and bread, fresh produce from the garden, and preserved foods from the cellar become really useful when faced with a water crisis with no assurance of when things will return to normal. We took things day by day and were very careful to plan our mess-free meals.
Laundry was the least of my concerns during this time. As long as I had the essentials, there was no way I wanted to haul extra water to wash clothes. The pile would just have to wait. When washing hands, that water was collected in a bucket again to flush the toilet. To brush my teeth—ok, that water was just too gross to think about collecting. That small amount could go down the drain. And there you have it. Every day, for three days, I hiked up a mountain. I found a natural spring and collected about 15 liters of water to haul back down. I carried a 5-liter bottle in each hand and a 5-liter bottle on my back in a backpack. It was about 11 lbs (5 kg) in each bottle. Who needs a gym membership? Perhaps I could have carried more, but I was a 20-year-old woman in a foreign country for the first time. It was not the time to mess up and twist my ankle trying to hike back to the village where I was staying.
Back to my modern life...
SO... this recent "slight inconvenience" of having no water in one of my bathrooms really got me thinking about "the privilege of water," and it upset me greatly to remember what it was REALLY like to have no convenient water nearby when I was younger. EVEN then, I could have thrown some money at the problem and just bought the water I needed from a nearby town. I wasn't really in a serious crisis.
I started googling some information about people who have NO access to clean water and found that:
"Around 2 billion people around the world do not have access to clean and safe drinking water, and approximately 3.6 billion people—46% of the world's population—lack adequate sanitation services, according to a new United Nations World Water Development report."
My brain broke after learning this data. I knew it was bad, but I thought the percentage of people without proper water access would be much lower by now. I cannot understand why it is still such a big issue to provide water for everyone on the planet.
I found an article that outlines the problem a little.
What are the solutions to reduce water scarcity?
It has some ideas to help with water scarcity, but I think there are many other creative solutions. I saw an idea to help with the water crisis MANY years ago, and it infuriates me that more progress has not been made on sustainable housing during the decades that we have known about better solutions than are on the market today. Below is a short video that describes how to harvest rainwater for homes. It was invented in the 1970s. Yes, over 50 years ago. I love the home designs created by the inventor of Earthship homes. The designer had to fight many legal battles because his designs do not rely on big businesses to supply homes with water and energy. People can design homes to live off the grid, and it is a problem in countries where businesses want to make profits off of basic human needs.
Earthship homes are something I have been fascinated by for MANY years. Here is how they harvest water:
Water Harvesting in Earthship Design
Below is a video to show how to design a simple home that collects solar energy and rainwater. I tried to find a short video to explain. I am restraining myself from showing you some of the BEAUTIFUL designs of some of these homes.
Simple Survival Model Earthship
If this idea "hooks" you like it did me, let me know what you think in the comments of this blog.
Or tell me your thoughts on how to provide water for all people.
Another idea that caught my attention a decade ago from a TED talk I saw was about saving water.
Ludwick Marishane: A bath without water
This guy invented "Dry Bath," which is helpful in countries without access to reliable water. His product helps people to clean themselves to avoid diseases when water is scarce.
It is 2023, and I refuse to believe that there are not sustainable solutions to provide all people with clean water. It just needs to become a priority. I am one person. You are one person. If each person decides to be a little more responsible with water availability, this global problem could be easily solved. I just wrote this blog to bring this issue back to the forefront of my mind and spread the word to anyone reading it. I don't have enough research data to really promote one charity over another, but this was on my mind today, and I remembered some innovations in technology that I thought would be interesting to share. Many times, I think we as a society tend to think of problems as being "over there" and not my issue. Something as important as water, though, is not one of those problems we can afford to disconnect from. If one group of people is short on water, we all should be working towards solutions. Water is a SHARED resource, and clearly, we lack enough to go around. Those with more need to give to those with less. Pretty simple, but not easy.
I always end my blogs with the word:
Cheers!
It reminds me of clinking glasses for a toast at a celebration. I wish one day the whole world could lift a glass of clear water and toast the end of the water scarcity crisis.
