Water Crisis!!

The other morning, I woke up, turned on the tap - and NO water! Not even a dribble!

The only place to find water was in our pool....so I trudged outside with a bucket, filled it with cold, slightly chlorinated water, and proceeded to take my "bath."

This experience made me think of the millions of people who don't have access to clean water - and can't just walk a few feet to a pool. Often, they have to walk miles to a water source and it could be a dirty, silty stream that has had people bathing in it, cattle walking through it and pooping in it ... As a result, they are very susceptible to serious illnesses which often lead to death.

But they need water to live - and if the dirty water source is the only place to get it, they use it. Even when they know that they have to boil the water to use it to drink, if they can't afford, or find, firewood to burn, they don't treat the dirty water... and they get sick.

Poverty creates a vicious cycle with limited choices.

What we have, that we take for granted:

Water coming out of a tap, in our homes - no need to walk long distances carrying heavy buckets of water on our heads

There is hot water AND cold water - no need to burn wood or charcoal to heat the water.

Water is clean enough to drink.

Plenty of water to use for household purposes and gardening - no need to ration it to avoid spending more hours to get water.

p.s. The issue with our lack of water was a broken water pump (to pump the water up to our holding tank - the big green tank seen in the photo). There were a couple of times when I had to take the "pool water" bath, but the pump finally got fixed.