Water

"Water is life, and because we have no water, life is miserable." –a voice from Kenya

This week Risa and I have been drinking a lot of water that we have to buy at the store.  We go through about 2 liters each a day because our bodies are not used to living here.  We can easily tell when we start to feel dehydrated.  As I sit here during the day drinking a lot of water I am so conflicted in my heart as I daily see  kids carrying water from who knows how far away daily.  Water is so essential to life.  I am reading "The Hole in our Gospel" by Richard Stearns right now and in this chapter he is talking about the problem of water around the world.  If we as Americans even stopped using water one day of our lives we would start to realize how much we use it.  We use it so much without thinking about it because we know that it is safe for us to drink.  But for a majority of the world that is not the case.  If suddenly our water supply was shut off "finding a way to get water would begin to consume our lives."  The book says as many as 5 million people die every year of water related illnesses.  (Joseph, the 19yr old who lives in the house behind ours, just told me one of his friends in school died of Typhoid-a water related illness.  He told me many people in the villages here simply do not even know that they need to boil their water to make it safe.)  Richard Stearns goes on to say that thousands of hours are lost seeking and hauling water, especially by women.  This task affects children too because millions of them are unable to attend school because of the hours they spend fetching water.  Richard Stearns then goes on to give an example of a community that was changed as the result of a borehole well that World Vision built in Ghana.  The well was built right near a school.  Before the well was built there were 40 students attending the school and now there are over 400.  This is because the women and children would spend five hours of their day fetching water several kilometers away.  This community is no longer riddled with Guinea worm disease either because that was in the contaminated water.  Clean water has improved their health.  There are also women now making skin lotions that are being bought by Bath and Body Works in the States.  (The only thing the women had needed to create this business was time and clean water, both of which were now available.)  Wow!  Water is life here in Africa.  May God lead us all to find ways to put an end to this water problem!