Me, Mel and Padre David, the priest who hosted us in Pamparomas, Peru. Mel and I were about to begin a hike up the mountains to visit the lake that provides the town with its water. MELANIE FRICOT
Me, Mel and Padre David, the priest who hosted us in Pamparomas, Peru. Mel and I were about to begin a hike up the mountains to visit the lake that provides the town with its water. MELANIE FRICOT
Have you ever been to a place where it’s dangerous to rinse your toothbrush under the tap?
When I was twenty-three, I visited my friend Mel, who had volunteered to lead development groups in Peru. For two months I hiked with her to tiny settlements in the mountains, worked on my Spanish, and even tried making bread in an adobe oven.
Then, suddenly, I got very sick. For days I spent almost all my time in the bathroom. Mel borrowed a truck to drive me three hours to the nearest hospital, and medical tests showed that bacteria (germs) from our water had multiplied in my digestive system. Antibiotics—and an intravenous drip that rehydrated my body—saved my life.
Not everyone is so lucky. Every day thousands of people—most of them children—die because they’ve drunk dirty water (or they don’t have clean water to wash with) and they can’t get to a doctor. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, people are finding creative ways to collect and clean all the water they need. Did you know that some families in Botswana use solar power to turn salt water into fresh water? Or that some folks in Chile use huge nets to catch fog that becomes clean drinking water? And at schools in several places, kids collect clean water by playing on playground-powered water pumps!
Everyone on the planet has a right to clean water, and people are working hard to make this a reality. Want to find out more? Grab a water bottle, and come with me!
These lakes, high in the mountains above Pamparomas, are the local drinking water source.The lakes were first built hundreds of years ago, then fell into disrepair and were recently reconstructed. MICHELLE MULDER
In this tiny settlement in rural Peru, people get their drinking water from a stream that runs between the houses. You can see it here at the bottom of the photo. MICHELLE MULDER
When I got sick in Peru, the news spread through the town quickly, and soon people appeared at our door with traditional remedies. Meanwhile, Mel whipped up more salty banana milkshakes than I’d ever imagined. (Yes, they were just as disgusting as they sound, but we knew that I needed to drink sugar, salt and fluids to get better.) In the end, it was Mel’s access to a truck and hospital that saved my life. Happily, I’ve never had to drink a salty milkshake since.
When you don’t have a water tap nearby, rivers and lakes are crucial. These families in Morocco wash clothes in their local river. HENRY MULDER
If your family decided to move, what would you look for in a new place? A big living room? A school, playground, library or shops nearby? Thousands of years ago—and even today, in many places—the first thing you’d look for was the nearest lake or river.
Every living thing needs water to survive. (And if you’ve ever swallowed salt water when swimming in the ocean, you know that not just any water will do. We need fresh, clean water.) Early humans slurped from rivers and lakes, using their hands as cups. These days, many people can drink a glass of water right in their own homes, simply by turning on a tap. How did we get here from there? The story begins about 12,000 years ago, with the planting of a seed.
Imagine waking up to the birds twittering and your stomach rumbling. You crawl out of bed to look for something to eat—not in the fridge, but in the bush outside your tent. A little while later, you’re chewing on a chunk of meat and tossing back a few berries.
This underground cistern in Istanbul, Turkey, was built 1,400 years ago by over 7,000 slaves. GIOVANNI DE CARO/DREAMSTIME.COM
WATER FACT: A person can live for weeks without food, but only a few days without water. The human brain is 75 percent water. Blood has even more water in it, and even our bones are 20 percent water. No wonder we need to drink so often!
For hundreds of thousands of years, people followed their food everywhere. If those antelopes (that your mom turned into amazing steaks) ran across the grassy plains in summertime, your family was there to meet (and eat) them. If those delicious purple berries grew in the river valley every September, you got there in time to pick as many as you could.
About 12,000 years ago, people in the Near East (western Asia) began to help nature along a bit. When they found a plant they liked, they cleared space to let it grow and brought the plant more water from the nearest lake or river. The plants grew bigger and yielded more food.
Soon, people stopped following their food around and stayed in one place, planting and tending their crops. Lugging water got exhausting, so they invented other ways to bring water to their plants. Some built big basins, called cisterns, to collect rainwater. Some tried to divert rivers or streams by digging channels to their crops. Others dug tunnels from rivers to fields. In fact, if you were a farmer’s kid thousands of years ago, digging tunnels might have been your chore, since kids are small enough to get through tunnels easily. Sudden gushes of water and collapsing tunnels made this a risky job, though.
Using wells for drinking water isn’t just a thing of the past. Many families around the world, like this one in Guinea Bissau in western Africa, rely on them for all their water needs. POTTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
WATER FACT: Canada has less than 1 percent of Earth’s population but enjoys 20 percent of its available fresh water. China has 20 percent of the world’s population and only 7 percent of its fresh water.
Much of Earth is covered in water, but did you know that a lot of water is underground too?
About 9,000 years ago, people began to dig wells—deep pits, usually lined with bricks, stones, or even wickerwork. The earliest well that we know about is in what is now the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The wells were great for drinking water, but not so great for watering crops. Imagine watering an entire field with a bucket. People who relied on wells for irrigation didn’t have very big fields.
A Peruvian woman cooks with water that she scoops up from the water channel in the ground beside her. MELANIE FRICOT