Water in the Desert
This morning I started my day just as I have done almost every other day for the last decade or more: looking out my kitchen window as I fill up the coffee pot with tap water.
The sunrise was cresting over miles of nearly empty desert, the sand turning golden in the newborn sun as water gushed from my faucet, echoing into my green metal percolator.
It is a different view than it has been in the past—when I’ve looked out to a backyard full of towering Virginia beech trees (and a falling over fence) or a sparkling (and only partially polluted) Florida bayou or a low spreading Texas pecan tree (with a swing hanging from its branches) or the flat hills of Oklahoma (toasty brown from the heat)—but the moment is the same.
And part of me feels that it shouldn’t be that easy.
We are in the middle of a desert. A desert. How is it that with zero effort on my part, I have clear, drinkable water right in my own house?
This may not seem like a big deal to many of you who grew up in the first world and have never left it. We are used to our modern conveniences. We assume that this is just the way that the world works.
It is not.
I grew up in a country where we boiled the water that we drank in a big pot over our gas stove. That was considered third world. But even then, there was water in my home, available with a quick twist of my wrist. I could brush my teeth with it (even if other expatriates assured me that I would end up with an amoeba—I didn’t).
My husband tells stories about showering in sewer water for a couple weeks after the hurricane hit our base in Florida. He was never sure if he was cleaner before or after he bathed. But even then, in a disaster area, there was water available that most likely wouldn’t kill you and at worst made you smell a little funky.
But here in the desert, I’m thinking a lot about the people of Chad, people who live in a desert not too different from my own, who have to leave their homes to find a water source that may or may not be reliable—and will definitely not be what we understand to be potable—and then drag that water back to their homes in jerry cans with their own muscles and will power under a blazing hot sun.
Most of you know that my sister works for an NGO called Neverthirst. She works with local churches to contribute water pumps and wells that will serve their communities. If you don’t follow her blog, you should, and if you haven’t read her latest post, go fix that.
Getting to hear her stories has changed the way I see my world.
Powerful words do that for us.
Now, when I look out into the middle of an American desert with American tap water flowing into my American coffee pot (that was probably made in China), I’m paying a little bit more attention. And I’m thinking of the Chadian women whose water required far more work and effort and so was found to be far more precious and far less taken for granted.
There is water in the desert—and that is a miracle.
Are we paying attention yet?
