January 2020 | Mississauga, Land of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation
This post is from my 2020 journal, documenting thoughts, questions, and observations moving and settling into a new country.
Water.
Why is water important? Health, wellness, a means to refresh your body which impacts the rest of you. So imagine moving countries, and not being able to do something you’ve taken for granted – drinking water with ease, without thinking much about it.
There are many things we have to relearn, many ways we have to restart, begin from nothing when we move countries. People often think that when people move north from the south, all the basic needs, the fundamentals are solved. That is NOT true.
Our first impressions – “Drinking water here is pants”. Everywhere you go, you get served tap water which reminds me of swimming pools. No, no, no can’t do.
This took me back to life in Lagos pre-2000. Once, we had a visitor to Nigeria come round to our house and ask for water. Said visitor went ahead to specify that they didn’t want tap water. I was a touch irritated – at the suggestion that there was a problem with Nigerian water. And quietly responded “I don’t drink tap water when I’m abroad, so I understand.”
Anyway, we try out 3 or 4 brands of bottled water – there isn’t a single one we can agree on. We have some grouse with all of them, top of which is that none of them taste like regular water. They are too sweet, overly chlorinated, too thick, and on and on.
Somehow, I wasn’t ready to buy a dispenser like we had in Lagos. We’d just arrived, I didn’t have a car (I still don’t) and the thought of lugging water left, right and center did not appeal to me.
Finally, out of frustration, we speak to my friend, R and she says she uses Brita water filters so we run to get one. We follow the instructions, clean it out three times, three changes of water and the chlorine goes from swimming pool levels to hmm, not bad, drinkable.
And that’s the story of how we started drinking water. Today, our fridge has a built-in filter and dispenser so water problems are solved.
And, then I reflect on how important, how fundamental water is to life and living and my heart aches for people all over the world, who do not have access to clean water, who do not have access to drinkable water.
Water is life.
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