Greetings!
I have been privileged to live in places where water is scarce, where those who have boreholes in their compounds are the wealthiest in the community. Because water is scarce, they sell it to supply citizens or the community. I have also lived in places where the most common sources of water are wells and rivers, and during the dry season, the wells dry up and the water in the rivers is reduced to a small quantity and becomes polluted due to the lack of water. In those places, getting water is a big struggle, and I always ask myself, what if eventually the water systems in the seas and underground sources dry up due to excessive usage or become polluted beyond use? How are we going to survive? I always get the answer: "No, water can't disappear from this planet because it has been in existence since the day of creation." This reply is comforting, but what if it happens due to the way we abuse water?
Although I didn't initially consider this aspect of water in my minimalist lifestyle, I have come to reflect deeply on it due to what I have seen and experienced.
Throughout my life, I have never lived in a place where water was easy to access. At our home villa when we were young, we used to fetch water from a stream, and after those struggles to push a bicycle carrying heavy gallons filled with water up a hill, you can't dare to waste it. I used to query my sister a lot back then because she didn't go to the stream to fetch water but knew how to squander it.
As I mentioned earlier, I once lived in the eastern part of Nigeria, where the depth of water is very far where it's very costly to drill a borehole, and at the privately owned boreholes that operate commercially, we would sometimes go there to fetch water, only to be told that the water was finished. They would try pumping the water but no way, it wouldn't flow out even when the machines are in good condition. They would need to give it good number of hours to try it again to finally get water. During those days, we would remain rough, dirty, and sometimes hungry until they finally pumped water....allowing us to fetch water again.
What if the underground water were to finish? It’s not possible, right?
In the city and compound where I currently live, water is also a scarce commodity. The water depth is low, and while one can easily drill a borehole, most of the time, they drill down to a point where the water isn’t drinkable. In my street, my compound has a borehole that brings up drinkable water, and it has become a fetching point for many houses in the area. The way they waste water each time they come to fetch is so annoying.
I have preached to them many times to stop wasting water because if one day the borehole stops pumping drinkable water, or if anything bad happens, we are all going to feel it. But they refuse to listen because, according to them, water cannot finish on Earth.
As much as we understand from geological studies that water doesn’t finish on Earth, what if it happens one day? Change is constant, you know.
I am very concerned about water; I will go to any length to curb its wastage because I have seen and experienced the terrible lifestyle of people living without it.
Humans barely take our dear Earth into consideration in the things we do or how we live our lives. We can help in any way we can to maintain the Earth by not allowing it to cry out due to excessive usage of its resources, as it is currently crying, and by making it clean.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to KISS prompt of the week.
Photos used are mine
