hakuna maji

I heard that all day yesterday. We were at the hairdressing school and the students where begging to go home an hour early; they couldn't do any treatments- there wasn't any water.

"Maji" has been a popular subject around here lately, due to the absence of it, but it also seems to be getting some shout outs from other locales...

My friend Katie recently posted this (end of the entry) about where we get our water from in the US.

One of my favorites, GOOD magazine, just published a whole issue about H2O (be sure to also check out the silly cover).

The US seems to be taking notice of the fact that water isn't really the unending, ever-present entity that we take for granted.

But as many times as I read that in a news article or hear my environmental geology professor explain it, I know that I can walk into just about anywhere, turn on a faucet, and out will come clear, clean water for as long as I want it to run. Oh yeah, not to mention the cold bottle of dasani available, well, anywhere. As long as I can get it, I don't waste my thoughts on who else can't.

Here, it is not so. Not even close.

This is about how much water a family that lives in the slums gets to use for drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, and cleaning for a week. A family of maybe 5 or 8 or 10 people. Once it's gone, its gone. Water comes only once a week.

Sometimes, it doesn't even come that often. Women like this waited in line for hours this morning just to hope for some to trickle out of the almost empty tank.


Children walk along long, dusty roads juggling all these containers: only to find that there's no more, they'll just have to wait. It's the way of life around here.



I'm here in Nairobi living in a comfortable house. I get water out of a faucet, and I can bathe in a shower. The water comes from a tank that's refilled by a big truck when it runs out. That's how the water system in Kenya works. And by refilled I mean, you wait for about 3 or 4 days and then it gets refilled. Kenyans aren't usually in a hurry to do anything, and the drought perpetuates water's already limited availability.

But don't worry (mom). The few days a week when water doesn't run out of the faucets here, and I can't shower (i know i know, i hate showering anyway), or can't rinse the slum dirt off my feet and legs in the sink- I still have water from buckets or bottles.

But of course, I secretly grumble. I'm annoyed when I come home in the afternoon and I just want to face my face and the faucet handle turns and nothing comes out. My friends, the day has come when I actually long for a shower, haha.

So last week, on the third day of waiting for the big water truck to make an appearance outside, I happened to reading this. Go read it, you probably haven't in a long time, it's refreshing. Then, if you keep going, you end up here:

...Moses led Israel from the Red Sea on to the Wilderness of Shur. They traveled for three days through the wilderness without finding any water. They got to Marah, but they couldn't drink the water of Marah, it was bitter. That's why they called the place Marah (Bitter). And the people complained to Moses, "So what are we supposed to drink?"... {15:22-24}

...yeah. It took the Israelites 3 days to forget that God parted a freakin sea.

So I laughed, feeling a little bit vindicated (thank you silly israelites) and a whole lotta foolish.

It takes me 3 days to forgot to praise the powerful God I have for what he's done because I'm too busy thinking about what I don't have. And what I don't have doesn't begin to compare to what others (most) in this city are lacking.

So I'm praising him for dividing a sea in two, for filling water tanks, for the rain I know he will send, and for all those other powerful things he does, like... oh yeah- saving me. ha.

I'm also learning how to take shorter showers :)