VERY Miscellaneous Thoughts on Water

Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it.

People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it. --Mikhail Gorbachev

I've never taken the time to stop and contemplate water - aside from those who probably contemplate their hands too, who has? Growing up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, it was something I have always taken for granted as being potable, endless and relatively cheap. But in most parts of the world none of these adjectives could be used to describe water, and living in the Middle East this last year has made me keenly aware of this fact.

Water has an impact on countless aspects of my life here and I've been forced to think about it more than ever before. When reaching for a cup of water to make ramen noodles, I have to stop and think about which water I'm reaching for. Depending on the time of the year, it's impossible to wash clothes in cold water. I need to think about where I'm parking the car, because if the sprinklers come on and spray it, it will rust the car. I don't want to leave a metal pan that has scratches in it soaking in tap water because it will rust as well. I have to remind the boys to keep the toilet lid up so that I don't get a wet bum when I sit down. I could go on...

Within the house we basically have three types: raw water, sweet water, and bottled water. In addition to that, the outdoor faucets have untreated raw water. The indoor raw water is what you will find in my kitchen, the bathrooms, the washing machine. In addition to being very hard, it also has a very high salt content. It makes our hair dull, our clothes wear out faster and rusts anything metal, including the razor in the shower, at a rapid rate. We use this water for washing, but NEVER drink it. I don't think it will hurt us, but it tastes NASTY!

Sweet water is only plumbed to the kitchen sink and the dishwasher (it does the final rinse in sweet water). It's further treated than the raw water. We mostly use it for rinsing hand-washed dishes that are going to air-dry, washing vegetables, washing the car and watering the plants. Though it's not as bad as raw water, it still doesn't taste good and none of us drink it.

We buy a couple of different kinds of bottled water for cooking and drinking: we have a large water cooler, similar to what you find in offices, with hot and cold tap. We also buy liter bottles of water to take upstairs for brushing our teeth.

The outside water is the worst of all. It's untreated and leaves weird salt-like patterns on our bricks. I don't know exactly what is in it and quite honestly, I don't want to know (ignorance is bliss, right?). I tell the kids not touch it if possible. It's only used for watering the lawn, washing our cement, and filling water balloons. They say that it's recycled waste water (whatever that means ), which is just another reason not to let it touch your skin!

In the past I've always washed most of our clothes on cold water. And I never questioned the availability of cold water - isn't all water cold, unless it's heated by the water heater? I now live in a climate that is hot enough to heat the ground water to fairly warm in the summer. Only in Dec/Jan/Feb am I able to get cold water in my washing machine. A friend of mine had something in October that absolutely need to be washed in cold, so she got a couple bags of ice from the store and dumped them into the water of the washing machine tub. Doesn't living here inspire creativity?

In the fall when it still blistering hot and then the humidity starts rolling in, we often wake up unable to see out due to the condensation on the windows. The severity reminds me of the bathroom mirror when the boys shower without turning on the fan. It's a sure indication that it's going to be a miserable weather day.

Speaking of condensation, the ultra warm ground water is the cause of the wet toilet seat problem that I've mentioned before. If we leave the lid down, something I finally trained everyone to do, the water condensates onto the seat. And if you sit there long enough (as some newspaper/comic book toting members of our family routinely do), it condensates on your bottom. Yuck!

I'm very much aware that despite all the above mentioned gripes about the inconveniences of water here, I have it better than most people in the world. I could drink my tap water (if I chose to) and bathe in it every day without getting sick . I don't have to walk anywhere to get it - it's just plumbed into my house. I don't pay for it (though Aramco does). I am among the fortunate minority in this world, and for that I am grateful.

Clean, drinkable water is scarce and expensive in many parts of the world, including this one. We live in a desert with very little rain, so the water supply comes from very deep reservoirs. This water has incredibly high amounts of salt and needs to be desalinated to be usable, quite an expensive process. There are land disputes over water and countries have gone to war because of it. In fact water seems to be more scarce than gasoline here, or at least one would assume by the price - we pay more for bottled water than we do for gas.

Enough of my ramblings...here are some of my favorite quotes about water:

I got this powdered water - now I don't know what to add.
Steven Wright


My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.
Mitch Hedberg


Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water!
Eleanor Roosevelt

"If we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get fresh water from saltwater, ..(this) would be in the long-range interests of humanity which could really dwarf any other scientific accomplishments."
-- John F. Kennedy