WATER is the elixir of life. But it’s made me pretty sick a couple of times.
On a trip through India I bought and drank half a bottle of water only to discover sediment in the bottom. Turns out it had been “rebottled” with tap water by the vendor. I hadn’t noticed the broken seal. It turned my stomach inside-out for a couple of days.
More recently, on a trip to Tanzania, I picked up a water-borne amoebic infection that was life-threatening. It’s tough when you can’t depend on the very stuff you need to survive.
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Folks in Red Earth, Sask., and Morris, Man., know all about that. They’re recovering from the flooding of rivers that normally sustain their life but have now destroyed their homes.
Last fall Kashechewan natives revealed that raw sewage was being pumped into their community’s water supply. They tried to correct the contamination problem by pumping extra chlorine into the water, but it aggravated a range of skin diseases without making the water safe to drink or use for bathing.
The people had to be airlifted out. According to the Assembly of First Nations, at least another 100 Native communities in Canada are suffering from the same difficulty and need emergency action.
Canadian governments claim to govern by a charter of rights applicable to all.
But with aboriginal communities, they have systematically ignored the basic right to life that clean water provides.
On the other hand, their efforts to clean up water supplies have also threatened communities. After Walkerton, the Ontario government brought in new water regulations that were stringent but completely insensitive to local realities.
Rural communities that had had safe well water for decades found themselves unable to have a potluck supper without laying out hundreds of thousands of dollars for upgraded water treatment.
It took a concerted effort by rural churches to press the government into taking local conditions into account.
Churches have always recognized this contested relationship we have with water. Christian baptism, for example, signifies both death and new life.
Such ancient rites remind us that we do well to pay it serious attention.
Last month, thousands from around the world tried to do that as they gathered in Mexico City for the fourth World Water Forum. Reading about their struggles to improve access to good water, two themes stood out:
1. Get local input with regional support. My father was a utilities officer. He knew if he tried to bring in a water and sewage system without village input into its design and maintenance, it would never last.
2. Listen to women. Usually they’re the ones dealing with the children who are most vulnerable to water problems.
When visiting rural villages in India, I listened to mothers’ anguish.
They told of losing many babies from miscarriage and dysentery because they had to use the same water for animals, sewage and human consumption.
Their grief, their love and energy were the powers that eventually led to clean water being brought into their villages.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Western Producer.
