I was up and about early this morning so that I could get to our doctor’s surgery for 9.00, a ridiculously early hour for me, but I suppose that someone has to have the early morning appointments. It was a beautiful morning. The full moon was setting over the hill in the west in a clear pale blue sky. The sun was probably already up but hadn’t yet come over the hill on the other side of our valley. Everyone I spoke to, including my doctor, commented on how cold it was, with the rider, “At least it’s not raining!”
On the subject of rain and the amount of water that is around at the moment in our part of the world (our river is very full and when we went to York at the weekend we saw fields flooded where the River Ouse had burst its banks) I have resolved to stop moaning about it when I read this latest episode of Ziad’s Gaza Diary.
He describes the importance of having a water container:
“In minutes, a very long line of men, women and children has formed, all with their water containers – names written on them to avoid losing them. If everything I had seen was not another reminder of how privileged I am, this is. Because for me, losing a water container is not a big deal; but for them, that simple item is critical.
But many people bring buckets, empty cleaning detergent containers, shampoo bottles and even plastic jars used for spices. A man helps the water provider organise the line.”
Imagine not knowing how long that water had to last you before you could get more.
Particularly poignant, for me anyway, was his description of a teenage girl’s enjoyment of drinking clean water:
“A girl, about 15 years old, wearing prayer clothes, gets out of the line after filling the jug she has. She can’t even wait to use something to put the water in. She takes off the lid and drinks the water. She closes her eyes to enjoy it. She puts the lid back and goes back towards the school with a big smile on her face.”
We are fortunate to be able to take for granted having clean water through our taps every day.
There is an artist called Shezad Dawood who makes works of art out of items dredged up from the seabed in places where immigrant boats have sunk in the in the sea between North Africa and Sicily. The Laboratory of Anthropological and Odontological Forensics (Labanof) at the University of Milan collects these items, which in some cases give closure to families who have been left wondering what became of their loved one and in others can be used as evidence that not enough was done to save them. The items include passports (of course), mobile phones (again, of course), medicines, and very often small quantities of earth from their homelands, carefully wrapped in plastic or cellophane. I think that, because we know that we will return to our homeland when we travel, we don’t value the actual earth in the same way. But if you have no idea when, or even if, you will be able to return home it becomes important to have a bit of the actual land to taken with you, even if it’s only for that bit of dried up earth to be buried with you one day.
We have much to be thankful for. How long it will be before I start to complain about the rain again remains to be seen.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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