God knows I love Notre Dame. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have pet peeves about the place. Recently, since coming to Bangladesh, one of my pet peeves has turned into an issue that boils my blood. Notre Dame has a beautiful, lush, and green campus. They need to water it to keep the place green, of course. In that effort, there are over 65,000 sprinklers on campus that are dedicated to doing just that. I can understand the need to water all that grass. What I can’t understand is the need for the sprinklers to water all the sidewalks too.
When the sprinklers pop up, there doesn’t seem to be an inch of sidewalk that is left dry. I am not the only student who has noticed this either. On the Notre Dame Facebook network, the group “ND Students Who are against Watering Sidewalks” currently has 97 members while a group that asks the simple question “Why are we watering concrete?” has nearly 500 members. On campus, watering sidewalks is something I would laugh at off as either a product of some efficiency study or just part of a plan to make sure no student arrives dry to class. But, since coming to Bangladesh, this has been less and less of a laughing matter to me.
For the past 6 hours, I haven’t been able to flush my toilet because I don’t have running water at the moment. When I’ve needed to wash up, I’ve had to do so using buckets of water I had saved from earlier in the day when there was some running water. Saving water and washing up from a bucket has become a routine for me and is a daily fact of life for many people living in Bangladesh. That is if you are lucky enough to have running water in your home at all. By the turn of 21st century, just over half of the people in Bangladesh had access to clean water and sanitation. That means that – as bad as I have it now – over 70 million people in this country are much worse off. Globally, one in five people don’t have access to clean water. Thankfully, this number has been lowering in recent years.
I know that the problem of water in Bangladesh doesn’t get magically solved if Notre Dame stops watering its sidewalks. But, this kind of useless consumption of resources seems to betray the ideals of that Notre Dame seeks to uphold. Afterall, this is the university that inspired me to fly thousands of miles to try and make a difference – all while having to live in a place where I have to wash my hands out of a bucket and schedule when I can flush the toilet. Right now, I’d give my left arm for the same access to water that our campus sidewalks are getting at this moment.
[Update: Looks like the facebook group "Why are we watering concrete?" is now over 500 members and climbing. Big thanks to Jessica Kim for the pic.]
They don’t call it the third world…err…”Global South” for no reason.
I think I’m going to go have a shower now. Maybe twice if I go for a run later
Peoples ignorance will never change about such matters unless they face the hardship themselfs.
here in the middle east gov beladi -mincip turn on water aswell down highways/motorways and flood the fast lane with water.. it had always annoyed me and annoys me even more since having an accident that was caused by the fast lane of the highway being wet.. not only is it a waste of water, its murder.
a couple of years ago i couldnt count how many Liters of water i used for a shower..now i can tell u since i got married and water etc is not longer a luxery, that it takes btwn 6 to 10 liters to shower and get clean, thats using a water bucket with a 1.5 liter marker on it.
We take water & elecrticity for granted.. if i was govener of a city in the west id turn water off once a week for agood 10 hours and let people see the difference.. im sure there are many kids right now in this world who would love a bubble bath or a shower to soak in but cnat afford such simple basics of life.
Alhumdulillah kul hal. Truely we are blessed and yet we are ignorant to such blessings. Allah forgive us.