A Water Crisis?
On a typical Monday morning, I usually wake up around
7:30ish, take my mom to the train station, come home, can’t go back to sleep,
so I start my day with a cup of java and my 9am weekly meeting with my boss
Marie. Little did I know on the morning of Monday, March 12, 2012, one moment
would open my eyes and force me to realize how much I take for granted.
“Olivia I need your help! Go shut off the main water valve,
water is overflowing from the toilet!!” This was my alarm clock on the morning
of Monday, March 12, 2012. My mom was yelling to me in desperation to help her
prevent another catastrophe from striking our home. Luckily, we were able to stop the rushing water and another
flood in our bathroom, which could have potentially penetrated through the
walls, all the way down to the basement. Catastrophe averted! Now the real headache begins. Getting
someone to come and fix it.
Fortunately, we have a great home improvement guy that fixes
anything and everything. My only concern
was that it was such short notice and we didn’t know if he could come that day
to fix it. First thought, “Oh man we are going to have to shut the water off.”
Someone shoot me now! I was able
to get our guy on the phone, told him the problem, and he responded with, “I
can come today in a couple of hours.” Crisis averted yet again!
As he had me on the phone, he asked me if I had shut the
water off. I told him no. In my head I was thinking, “I need access to the
shower, to wash my hands, fill up the Brita with clean water because it is the
main beverage I drink, make my coffee, cook pasta for lunch, and many other
things.” He tried to convince me
the best thing was to shut the water off, but I wound up waiting till he came
to my house to fix the toilet bowl. Because of my decision, I had to go up to
the bathroom every 20 minutes and dump out the bucket of water from the busted
pipe on the toilet. What a pain!
After about the
10th time trudging up those dreaded steps, it finally hit me. Olivia, you are being ridiculous! The
thought of having no water for just a couple of hours terrified me. As this
realization hit me, I literally stopped on the steps and my first thought was
about the people in Haiti. I am fortunate to be working with Community2Community
(C2C), who believes that everyone, no matter where you are in this world, has
the basic right to the essentials needed to live a healthy and happy life. One of those basic and fundamental
sources of life is water.
Living in a country like America, we are fortunate that we
don’t have to think about where we are going to use a bathroom, how and where
we are going to wash ourselves, and what we are going to cook with. Clean water
is easily accessible to us. Why can’t it be like this for our fellow brothers
and sisters in Haiti?
Here I was
freaking out about the fact that I would not be able to use the bathroom, take
a shower, have water to cook and drink with, and make my coffee that I oh so
“needed”, when up until recently, the communities that C2C works with didn’t
have a place to go to the bathroom.
After I started thinking about the people we work with in Haiti, I
finally opened my eyes to the fact that I take water for granted and truly
understood how imperative it is in our daily lives. Water is like air. We need
it to function. Without it we literally don’t exist.
Now thinking about it, I am irritated at myself that it took
an incident, such as my bathroom almost flooding, to realize how important
water is in our daily lives. It is hard for me to even fathom how the
communities we work with in Haiti, prior to us helping them build 15 latrines,
had to search for an area to use as a substitute for a bathroom or risk not
going at all. That is not acceptable! I am happy to say that I am a part of an
organization that is working to ensure that all human beings basic rights are
being met.
Olivia Robinson is the Project Coordinator and Executive Assistant for Community2Community. She is a recent graduate with a BA in Anthropology from American University. Contact Olivia at olivia@community2community.info.