I recently heard a story that a cultural anthropologist told about getting clean water in an area where there was none. As the story goes (the short version), a group of foreigners visiting a small village noticed how the women had to walk miles each day to get water from a dirty stream. As a result much time was wasted on this journey and most of the children died from water-born diseases, since the water was not clean anyway. The foreigners, knowing the easy solution, helped to dig a well in the village, said "you're welcome" and left feeling good. Consequently, the infant mortality rate dropped significantly, the children were healthier and the village grew much larger. Eventually, the population got to be so large that the land could not provide enough food for everyone. Many experienced starvation and the rest had to vacate the very land that had been in their family for centuries.
Not a very heart-warming story. Here's a few things I get out of it, in no particular order:
1. Our best intentions don't always work out.
2. It takes time and discernment to know what is best. We still might not get it right, but I think we're responsible for thinking of the short and long-term solutions.
3. We must exercise humility in all things.
4. If we have an idea, it might help to hook up with people that have tried similar things before or join people that are already doing something similar, in order to skip avoidable pitfalls.
What are some things you get out of the story?
Having said that, I think that everyone still deserves clean drinking water, and thinking too much into every situation might inhibit us from doing good where we can; leading to inaction. As the saying goes from Ecclesiastes:
Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.
So, the medical group that came down last week also brought some nifty little water filters that you can read about here. They're easy to install and simple to maintain. I got to be the one to drive Dave and Ken around and help them deliver the filters to families that requested them.
As one of my co-teachers in India said: "Water is more precious than gold, for without it, we could not survive."A couple of the organizations that uses these filters:
very awesome to hear!!! I am going to present this filter system to our missions board for possible future projects. I love what you were able to pull out of the story it is so true sometimes that we don't take time to think of repercussions of something that we are doing. and I agree as well that we all deserve clean water.
ReplyDeleteSaw this on a Ted talk a while back. Seems like it could do a lot to help the problem. http://www.lifesaversystems.com/
ReplyDeleteI like this post. I can't really explain why, but I do :)
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