Cape Town Water Challenge

So this is that moment when you realise that you are a bit shit at what you do and that in fact, you have to question; are you really doing what you say you're going to do while avoiding the obvious and figuring out that you might have failed yourself? This is as much a blog about anxiety as it as about water in Cape Town. I mean for fuck sake, seriously try living in a disaster zone.

So today (yes today) I started writing another blog post that highlighted the Cape Town Water Challenge (it makes it sound like some reality T.V show). The reason that I am writing Cape Town Water Challenge is as much as trying to get a grip on some runaway language that may be better explained in this The Life Doula blog.  On the other hand, crisis can also mean opportunity. The Cape Town Water Opportunity? How wild does that sound? Maybe your beginning to understand the complexities of  Cape Town during what was the 2018 water situation. As we try to breath deeper into conscious consumption and water wisdom. 

The big news of my lived experience is lost, subsumed, in all the opinions of what everyone's take on the matter was and well getting married. I failed to record my lived experience except for a few random posts on Facebook. Where you're not really writing about what you're supposed to be writing about when you live in the first modern city that might actually run out of water. We didn't. Have lessons been learned? Not really. The language change and vibrational energy with which we approach any problem is as much as most of us learned. We have to embody the feels of abundance in order to co-create change in any situation. Now today there are many people here in Cape Town that believe that the water crisis has been averted by way of collective prayer. Get your head round that? These peeps aren't even religious. Yes, there was a lot of collective prayers and blessings. And just like kids with shiny toys, we drop one thing when it's lost its sparkle and head right on over to the next. 

So what was that lived experience like? Well, guys there just wasn't enough water. Literally. our daily limit was 50 litres. Which sounds a lot when you are only thinking about drinking the stuff. There is so much more to it than that. There are dishes and laundry, washing ourselves and other chores. 1 load of water took you right over your daily limit it a jiffy. We had water planning charts. We had to hand flush the toilets with water from the bath. We had to limit what clothes and sheets we washed. We had to plan what we wear and wear clothes until they were physically dirty. We only washed extensively when we began to smell ourselves. Many people (especially women) went weeks without washing their hair. Me included. It was wild. In fact, some people cut their hair off.  

Many of us weren't very water wise at all some people saved no water. Kept their pools topped up, their gardens water. They were all the ones that panic bought water. It was full on. There were massive talks about desalination plants (turning salt water into drinking water). There was also a whole load of criticism about the water dams and reservoirs that were supposedly all created in the wrong spaces. Many people also talked a lot about closed loop water systems. How we could manage our wastewater better. That was all until somebody brought up typhoid and cholera water-born diseases that were still common if water was left to untreated. A toddler even drowned in a water-saving tank. There were conversations about the wasted fresh water the flowed out under our city and into the sea without every being utilised and how old victorian infrastructures had stayed in place long after they were known to be useful. There was fresh water in Cape Town we just couldn't get to it. Which dug up a lot of feeling about colonialism, the history of Cape Town as a Khoi San gathering place. With its real name being "The Place Where The Rain Clouds Gather".  The rain clouds continued to gather. There was water in Cape Town. All the queues to the natural spring were long. People watch your water consumption like it measured your self worth or value to the collective. And all the time the water was running under our feet. It was time for change. I believe it is coming.

Cape town is actively committing hydrocide in the Place of Sweet Water. Place of Sweet Water.