Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year's topic is water.
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Several years ago, my husband and I lived in a little cottage in Kampala, Uganda. It was very lush there. Behind the cottage, a small yard descended steeply to a dirt road. It was filled with wild garden----frangipani, jasmine, birds of paradise, bottle brush, agapantha and magnolia trees competed with the bougainvillea vines that seemed to grow inches a day, winding their way up anything that didn't move swiftly. The basil I planted grew so gargantuan that one day it just slumped over and died, like a drunkard whose liver finally gives in. The rains, when they came, were Biblical. I lay awake at night with a racing heart, thinking for sure the cottage would soon detach from its foundation and float down the hill. I lay awake thinking of the Ugandans who lived across the valley in shacks that perched precariously on hills stripped of all trees.
I worked for an aid organization at the time and sometimes I would travel to Gulu, in northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had been creating havoc for 15 years (and continue to). Leaving behind the tropical shores of Lake Victoria, the landscape turned brown and dry and flat. But it was still Africa, with wild weeds and shrubby trees taking advantage of every crack in the hard-packed soil.
One day we drove out to Pabbo, a refugee camp an hour from Gulu, where about 26,000 Ugandans had fled the LRA's violence. We toured the dusty camp, asked questions, looked at wells, took notes, met officials, waited, looked at clinics, met more people, waited some more. There were long lines at the wells, but at least there were wells. Outside the refugee camp, most people sent their daughters to the water source, often a long and arduous trip that made girls very prone to attack and assault.
As always, a group of children followed us around the camp. As always, they were quiet, giggling, half-dressed in rags, curious and bored. One had a kite made from a shredded plastic bag tied on a stick which made him a scholar and a prince among the others. It was a grey day, and though no one was crying or dragging or having mental breakdowns, there was a sort of fatigue that hung over our group, and the camp, and the day, and the war.
Toward the end of the day, colleagues were finishing business while M. and I waited, leaning against the Land Rover. The children stood around us and stared. If we raised our eyebrows or waved a little, they giggled in unison for three seconds, then immediately returned to their flat, inquisitive stares. Soon M. and I stopped thinking about them.
I reached into the Land Rover to get a bottle of water. Still chatting, or maybe not, I opened the bottle and---reflexively----I started to tip the bottle. M.'s hand out shot out and his voice almost coughed No! I smiled back to suggest What do you mean? while the bottle tipped and I splashed a thimble full of water into the palm of my hand, to splash my hands and face a little.
But before he could reply, the children exploded. Before the water hit my palm, they broke their stillness, their quiet, and flashed into action. Water! Precious water just falling, like that! Free and easy water! They scurried beneath me, they reached up for the drops, they fell to the ground to become nothing, no higher than rodents, no higher than that.
Helen Frankenthaler, Aerie (2009)

