Okay, it rained.
ADEL came and gave us the gift of life.
We were dried out, like raisins and prunes. It gave us a few drops to breathe a little.
A short breath — not enough to fill our lungs.
It’s not the ‘finally’ we say with the first rains. I say this not because the first rains aren’t a true ‘finally,’ but because we know ourselves. This ‘finally’ often means:
What water shortage? The problem is solved.
NO.
No problem is solved with just two rains and a lightning bolt.
Because our life is like lightning, yet we still thirst dangerously — to paraphrase Kazantzakis.
If you’re broke and a twenty falls into your hands, you’re not broke anymore. But now you can stop worrying about your next meal and put some fuel in the car. Soon enough, you’ll be broke again.
If you write an essay and finish the introduction, yes, you no longer have a blank page. But you still don’t have an essay.
This is like what happened during the few hours lady Adel visited us and darkened our skies.
But from washing yards with a hose again, wanting to rinse an apple while leaving the tap running for a minute and a half, or showering just because it feels good — the gap between these situations is huge.
And we’re talking about those who care and understand water scarcity. Some people (a significant number) still waste water like we live in Alaska, thinking we can just warm up some ice to drink.
Sadly, we live in a place where rain is rare, and using water wisely must become our culture. Even when dams fill up sometimes or it rains for 20 days straight — which happens as often as the Olympics every four years — EVEN then we must not relax about water.
If we keep the fear of water shortage in mind, since this is our normal state of ‘sufficiency,’ then we can look at the future SLIGHTLY more positively.
Otherwise, it’s never too late to clear coastal areas of cottages and hotels, install desalination systems, or replace our pools with water collectors. These may seem like unrealistic solutions so that neither we nor our children have to fight that war we used to joke about: the (civil) war for water.
Papa – Ratses
