Monday, October 30, 2006
Daily showers--our north american right?
Last week on the mount was an interesting experience. Going without the normal northamerican amount of water allowance for showers led one to reflect on the state of water in the world. My african colleagues seemed unflummoxed by our lack of shower water due to the water crisis. The north americans were panicked. No showers for 6 days, finally rainwater to wash ones hair by the weekend. How much we north americans do take our daily showers for granted? Do we actually need to take daily showers? Most of the world's population is not privy to such extravagance. Overall the experience was valuable and alerted one to the unthinking presumption we North Americans can have about our right to a continuous abundance of water for our personal use. Yes, everyone needs clean water to drink. This is a basic human need, and yet, not all of humanity even has this basic need met. In North America, we cannot forget, we live a life of priviledge and often unthinking ingratitude. Daily showers are a priviledge not a right. Yes, today, I finally had the priviledge of a hot shower and was never so thankful in my life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It's been my opinion for a few years that North Americans are hygeinically insane. Showering has gone from being a nice thing, to a socio-neurotic obsession. I think showering every day is absolutely useless and uncessary. I do it for the sake of the people around me, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable in an environment where everyone showered once a week. I remember when Summit went without water for 5 days (was it 4 or 5?). There was no noticeable smell, aside from in the washrooms where toilets couldn't flush. Other than that, things ere ok. We had drinking water at meals, and there really was no smell wafting around the halls.
Another observation. Our water is too clean. We get sick with the slightest contamination. I read somewhere that in places where the water is dirty, it doesn't effect people who grew up on it to near the same extent it would effect a Westerner. We have this nasty habit of cleansing things to the point where if they're not cleansed extravagently, we can't handle it anymore. We lean so much on assistance that our bodies are becoming weaker.
Well, every culture has its problems. They're probably irreversible, and don't need to be reversed. A hightened sense of thankfulness for the luxurious extravegance we live in would be useful though. Good post Mom.
I recall that about 1996 when I was living in Kashechewan, the following incident took place:
There was a group of youth from a Toronto church who were visiting some of the James Bay communities, on a mission trip. When they arrived in Kashechewan I met them at the airport, and took them to the church, where they were housed in an apartment in the basement of the church building. Upon arrival, and finding that there was a shower in the apartment, one of the youth commented that she was so relieved there was a shower, as she had not been able to have one for a week or two.
She made this same comment to a local Kash youth, who happened to come in about that time. I realized that the Kash youth had perhaps never had a shower in her life, at that point in time! (At that time many of the homes in the community still had no running water at all.)
As I understand it there are still a number of native communities in Canada today who do not have running water at all, and many native communities who do have running water have "boil water" advisories on!
Post a Comment