Saturday, December 11, 2010

Maji

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that near Boma on the slopes of Kilimanjaro the climate is quite different than that producing Boma's parched earth. Yesterday I traveled with pastor and eight other passengers to one of these towns where despite long droughts, tropical crops such as bananas manage to grow year round due to heavy biannual rains. As we drove through the town, a steady downpour persisted, flooding the streets and running off into a new above ground storm drain system resembling an oversized gutter. I gazed out the window and the sight of two kids jumping down into the storm drain to fill buckets caught my attention. I don't know if they intended to to drink the brown street runoff, cook with it, or clean with it, but the sight caused me to contemplate the power of water in Africa and it's global inequality of distribution.

I thought a lot about water distribution across Tanzania and the burden and blessing of the biannual rain cycle. Tanzania is actually incredibly lucky to have biannual rains. Many regions receive rain only once a year and subsistence farming is a never ending struggle. Despite this fact, even life with biannual rains is difficult. While some regions such as the slopes of Kilimanjaro receive excess rain that causes floods that damage roads and homes, others only receive brief rains during this time. Mama explained to me how a few Australians have been working in the dry Masai lands to build water catchment systems that enable year round availability of clean water. As I learned about this exciting technology I thought about the importance of clean water, something that most westerners take for granted.

Though simple in concept, access to clean water is one of the great struggles in Africa and across the developing world. According to National Geographic's April water issue, one eighth of the world's population lacks access to clean water. That is about eight hundred and sixty people plagued by the risk of deadly diarrheal disease caused by water bourn pathogens. It seems to be a needless waste of life and cause for struggle. I thought back to the two children in the street gutter and wondered what their fate will be.

While we are very lucky to have a water pump at the farm, flooding the fields comes at great expense and with great sacrifice. As we struggled to fix the machine's pipes with strips of old tire tube I turned to Pendol, one of the farm hands, and said, “Kwa Africa, maji ni kazi. Kwa America, maji siyo kazi” (Water is work for Africa, but for America, it is not.” To this he replied, “Kazi, kazi Joshua, Africa kazi” (Work work, Africa is work). Pendol is correct. Still, the stream fed by Kilimanjaro's glacial melt that runs through the farm is a true blessing that many Africans do not have. Women living in developing countries including many throughout Africa walk an average of 3.7 miles at least once a day to fetch water and many of their families subsist on less than five gallons per day. This is a great contrast to American home's average use of one hundred gallons per day where plentiful, clean, piped water is the norm. To give context to this, you probably use more than five gallons if you flush your toilet two or three times per day. Consider this the next time you leave the sink running and walk in the other room.

Water will be the great issue that defines the next millennium. While technology offers some hope for improving water availability particularly to the developing world, the status quo of water consumption is not sustainable in the long run. We are depleting aquifers faster than they can naturally recharge and polluting many important water sources. I had a long conversation with mama last night over candle light after heavy rains had knocked out the electricity. We compared examples of water use and I explained the situation in America. We are incredibly lucky with our current water availability across the country, but I explained that many regions are quickly depleting their water resources. The depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer in the midwest and the draining of the Colorado river by thousands of farms and major cities are just two examples of the ticking time bomb that we are creating for the coming generations.

Water is life and some economists and ecologists have projected that water will be the oil of the next millennium with high prices and international conflict resulting from its scarcity and unequal distribution. While we consider this very real threat to the future of the developed word, the developing world is currently feeling the impact. “We are still building our Africa,” says one Tanzanian, and infrastructure, particularly related to water has a long way to come. Many of Tanzania's problems such as access to clean water are so fundamentally simple that it drives me crazy. However, they are so vast in scale that improvement comes “pole pole” (slowly, slowly). Water is one area where I have seen many non profit organizations and international aid organizations making great strides. I can only hope that with improved infrastructure comes education in order that the developing world does not repeat the mistakes that the developed world has made over the past century.





 
Source: The global water facts in this post are from National Geographic's April 2010 special edition entitled “Water, Our Thirsty World.”