A Monthly Publication

By a Wayfarer

5 “Water, water, - everywhere?”

“February fill the dyke, Be it black or be it white; But if it be white, It's the better to like.” So runs an old country rhyme which, like most of these old sayings, was based on observation of how things always were. However, as our climate changes around us, old patterns are being turned upside down.

As I write these notes just after Christmas, we are just getting over a short spell of snow and everything around is very wet. But most of us in Hunstanton can settle down comfortably by a nice warm fire watching the telly with a nice cuppa - or whatever. However, others are still trying to come to terms with the catastrophic flooding in Cumbria and elsewhere which has ruined the lives and expectations of many.

I have also been receiving heart-rending reports of serious flooding elsewhere in the world which has caused havoc on a grand scale - far greater than in Cumbria. Whole villages and towns demolished by water and mud slides, many hundreds killed and many thousands of people rendered homeless and totally destitute as relief for them is almost non-existent. At the other end of the scale, serious droughts are threatening whole countries as crops and animals die for lack of water. Even where water is available, for millions it is not clean water. For them typhoid, cholera and other waterborne diseases are an ever-present threat, quite apart from the daily struggle to fetch enough ‘water’ to live on.

Coleridge-Taylor’s “Ancient Mariner” certainly experienced the cruel irony of being surrounded by water, but not any he could drink!

Some years ago there was a banal advertisement for some particular fruit squash that ran “It is fun to be thirsty!” I can only conclude that these ad-men had never ever been truly thirsty - let alone dying of thirst.

My own experiences in South America, West Africa and Europe speak to me not so much of lack of water, but water in the wrong place, undrinkable, or even deadly.

It is over 20 years since I stood at the foot of one of the 8 great glaciers on “El Tronador” - “The Thunderer” - in the Argentine Andes. This extinct volcano rising to nearly 11,500 feet, is a permanently snow-covered peak. Locked within the glacial ice are many thousands - if not millions - of tons of water, but none you can drink. Seeing the glacier itself was quite a shock. Its moving face was over 40 feet high, but instead of the brilliant blue-green ice I had expected, it looked more like a slice of filthy grey granite. This was due to the many tons of dirt and debris it had accumulated in its inexorable journey down the mountainside.

Since I was there these glaciers are significantly retreating due to global warming.

The melt-water from snow and glacier sources several rivers including the Rio Negro which provides the most fertile fruit-producing region of Argentina. However, it involves a long journey and much treatment before being fit to drink.

While there may appear to be an abundance of water up in the mountains, down on the plains - the vast rolling ‘Pampas’ - it is a different story. Much of it resembles a desert. However, there is water here but you have to dig down to get it - sometimes to great depths - and you need a pump! The familiar sight of the wind-pump reminds me that the fan blades have to face directly into the wind - however stormy - in order to bring life-giving water to man and beast.

In sharp contrast to ‘El Tronador’, several years ago I stood on top of one the high Andean passes in Bolivia, bleak and windswept. At an altitude of around 17,000 feet, I was staring not at snow, but at a most unexpected sign board. This proudly announced that UNICEF had provided drinking water to 4 villages between 8 and 16 kilometres away in this most inhospitable area! This was a much needed alternative to the polluted river that had previously been their only source of water. In the village I visited, I saw but one tap - lifesaving yes, but hardly the concept of ‘on-tap’ that we expect as normal.

At the other end of the scale, in Côte d’Ivoire I saw many wells in villages - but frankly I wouldn’t want to drink the water that came from any of them! Apart from the disgusting colour, I had been warned of the very real danger of a deadly variety of waterborne diseases from which ‘Westerners’ such as I would very soon fall victim. In some villages, they were fortunate enough to have been provided with a bore-hole and hand-pump. But this still means that villagers ( the women, of course ) have to carry - usually on their heads - anything up to 40 or even 50 kilos of water back to their homes.

But if you think that pollution of wells is strictly a third-world ( or should that be two-thirds-world ? ) problem, you would be mistaken. Some years ago I visited my cousin in Sicily where he has Pastored a Church for many years. Although the water supply in the city of Messina is all that we would expect, in the surrounding hill country it is a different story. On a beautiful plot owned by the Church - an old olive grove with farm house - my cousin showed me their bore-hole and well. Unfortunately it had become polluted by sewage effluent seeping through the rocks from adjoining properties. The water on which they depended was therefore poisoned and undrinkable.

There are far too many people in our world today who have either very limited access to water, or what they have is polluted - a situation which seems set to get worse. There is also a spiritual dimension to this sorry state of affairs as the majority of people seem to live on a moral ‘diet’ of pollution and corruption.

The Copenhagen conference on Climate Change is now history. While world leaders argue over the size of sticking plaster required to plug the hole, the awful truth is that the ‘Titanic’ is sinking - fast! It is nearly 100 years since that terrible disaster. As the great ship sank, the band played “Nearer my God to Thee.” For us too, the hour is very late indeed.

In an earlier article I have already referred to Jesus as the only source of clean and living water for our souls. It is certainly my prayer that more of our readers will turn to Him who alone can save our world which seems to have already pressed the self-destruct button.