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March 22, 2007

The World's Water Woes

People & Cattle at a Waterhole Kenya, Eastern Africa

Here in the US, we give our babies frequent baths. As they grow up and become mobile, we let them crawl around and then wipe them down with wetwipes to get rid of the germs. We spray them with Off to keep the bugs away and then we let them play in sanitized sandboxes and laugh at how cute they look with their little dirt smudges. Finally, we have them run through the garden hose to clean them up.

Most of the world doesn't have these luxuries we consider such simple pleasures. Frankly, most people would be horrified by the conditions in which many people live in the third world. The charity commercials you see on television show a very cleansed version for our delicate sensibilities. We've seen countless children playing in areas that make our landfills look clean, looking at us with huge smiles, batting the flies from their soulful eyes. The children form little packs, the older ones (like 5 or 6 year olds) often watching over the younger ones. Their parents nowhere to be seen.

How dare their parents leave them alone, you're thinking. What kind of negligence is this?

All over Africa and Asia, we witnessed local women and teenage girls walking for miles along roadsides to and from murky waterholes to fetch water. They share these waterholes with the local wildlife and their cattle and goats. They spent their days hauling water back and forth to their families. You ask where the mothers are; this is where you'll find them. Not in schools. Not with their children, except for the newborns strapped to their backs. They are wearing long dirt paths along the roads, hauling heavy containers of water, much of it is untreated but they have little choice in the matter.

When aid workers set up in a new village, perhaps the first issue addressed is providing people with convenient access to water. Very little else can be achieved until clean water is available. Think about it: cooking, cleaning, hygiene, farming... they all depend on water. All plans to provide education and such have to be tabled until these basic human needs are met. Many villages throughout the world still lack these basic building blocks of healthy life.

Woman Walking To The Water Kenya, Eastern Africa

The world water crisis is one of the largest public health issues of our time. Nearly 1.1 billion people (roughly 20% of the world’s population) lack access to safe drinking water. The lack of clean, safe drinking water is estimated to kill almost 4,500 children per day. In fact, out of the 2.2 million unsafe drinking water deaths in 2004, 90% were children under the age of five. Water is essential to the treatment of diseases, something especially critical for children.

More At: World Water Day: March 22, 2007

Today is the 15th annual World Water Day, and it's focus is the Scarcity of Water and to promote the fulfillment of clean water initiatives by 2015.

Some of the most amazing scenes of cultural significance that we witnessed in Africa took place at the clean water pumps. Villagers would come from miles around to get their water and they would meet each other and socialize while their children played in the mud puddles.

Posted by sorsha at March 22, 2007 1:13 AM