If you are reading this it is more than likely that you will have woken up this morning and found as you usually do that the taps turn on and water flows to clean your teeth or take your shower.
This morning I woke early as a friend arrived on the early train. All was well for the first short time then the tap went dry as I began to run a bath for her.
An interesting trigger for me.. here I am working for the water of this world – dedicated to bringing awareness to everyone about how badly we are treating our water and how already 1 in 9 people on our planet do not have access to clean drinking water – let alone water that simply flows cleanly out of the tap!
And I realised as my first reaction was one of annoyance.. bordering on entitled anger – how can it happen that our landlord allows this to be so for the thrid time in the last 24 hours and now he is sleeping and I can’t rouse him to do anything about it and there is no water for bathing or for the toilet .. or anything!!
and then I stepped back .. and watched my sense of entitlement – stepped back and saw – first the thought.. ‘well if I knew it was going to happen I could be ready for it.. I could store some water’ – and then the next thing – ‘what if this was always the case?’ what if I could never tell if there was going to be water available? what if I too had to walk 2-3 kilometers to carry heavy water back on my head to my children – never being sure that the water I was labouring hard to get was even clean and would be okay for them to drink.
And I realised that my work for water is coming from a place of no real experience – a place where I am of the lucky ones – I can go to the shop and buy what I need – I can usually turn on the tap and have water just right there. If things got really bad – I coud get on a plane and head back to the ‘lucky country’ – Australia – where despite the dryness of our land no one ever really expects their taps to be dry!
So as I prepare in these last fews day to be ready to go to the Energy Globe Awards in Iran – to present our work of working for water – I get just a glimpse of how incredibly privileged I am – to have a bed to sleep in, a roof over my head, a fridge to keep my food cold and fresh and most of all a tap that most times gives water freely and in abundance.
How unreal is my life in comparison to the lives who we are working for.. the small farmers, and their families who’s bore wells have run dry – who sometimes like me and my tap – don’t really have a picture of it running out .. and not being there to use?
Yes Shazar – a small wake up has been given to you this morning – a wake up that reminds me just where I stand in this world – in a small percentage of those who have. No if I look around me in Australia – relatively I am not wealthy – but oh how rich I really am.
