Kristen: Water

So I've been thinking about water lately.

Bluffton water, even though we now import it from the nearby town of Ottawa, is still not the most mouth-watering. So once in awhile, Devon and another one or two people will go out to his house at the nature preserve where there is well water. We'll fill up a 5 gallon igloo container and whatever number of gallon jugs we have lying around (last time we went, I think it was around 11...). We put the jugs in the car to drive about 1.5 miles, fill up, and drive back. Then we get the fun job of carrying all that water upstairs to the third floor, where the kitchen is.

Sometimes, this doesn't seem like a very fun thing to do. Yeah, the water tastes better, but who really has time to spend 45 minutes carting water? Who wants to put forth the effort to carrying that all up the stairs.

I started to realize how fortunate I am/ we are. A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a man from Zimbabwe, who explained his work building wells for villages in Africa. He explained that more than half of the world has to walk a lot of miles (I can't remember the number, but it was a lot!) to get water every day! This has a big impact on gender roles and education, too, because it is young girls' job to get the water, meaning that they can't attend school. So, digging wells at more frequent intervals allows girls to have a chance to attend school. Cool.

It's so easy to fail to appreciate the abundance of running water we have. I don't think we need to shut off our water supply and start walking miles each day to get water, but I think it's good to remember that the water running through our pipes is a luxury that not everyone can afford.