Do you ever stop and think how very privileged we are to be living in this country?
It’s very unlikely that anyone here wakes up in the morning, finds a bucket and then walks a mile or more to fetch water. Unfortunately, huge numbers of people in the world have to do just that. Most frequently they are small girls who then miss out on school. Granny Cole, the lady who used to live in my old house in the High Street, Guilden Morden, used to recount how she
had to walk down to Trap Ditch in order to fetch water.
I once taught in a girls’ Grammar School in West Africa where there was no running water. There were huge underground tanks that filled up in the wet season. Every girl and every member of staff were each allocated one bucket of water per day. That was for drinking and personal washing. Every drop had to be boiled and filtered before it was fit to be used.
Water was used twice or more times. What you washed yourself in was saved to wash clothes. Then it might be used to clean floors. It was finally used to water the plants.
The weather this summer has been very like a tropical dry season while we waited and waited for the rain to come. In the tropics you knew the dry season was coming to an end because you could hear the rain coming and every girl regardless of what we were doing in the lesson would rush outside to the games field and dance with delight as they got soaked. They certainly valued water. It was a real joy for me when I returned home to turn on a tap and see real wet water come out.
So, let’s thank God for our water and the other privileges we have like food, clothing, schooling and a relatively peaceful country. Most people in the world do not have those.
Cicely Murfitt, Ministry Team
Guilden Morden