Katherine's post is part of our Lenten Water Project. Throughout this Lenten season our writers will be focusing on the subject of water and what that means to them. Please donate to our well-building efforts, and if you have something YOU would like to say about water, let us know and we'll post it here!
I sat on the bouncing bus, feeling so woozy that my brain seemed to be several feet above me and so nauseated that my stomach seemed to be…well…everywhere. 12,000 feet up on a winding Andean road, I sat grasping the little white altitude sickness pill in my trembling hand, wishing desperately that I could take it.
But I couldn’t, because I had no water.
On this long, rural road, there were few places to purchase water. Where it was available, stacked crowdedly in tiny, gated tiendas beside the road, or draped over the shoulders of traveling salesmen yelling “agua, agua!” it was impossible to know if it had been drawn from local faucets, containing parasites and bacteria that my unaccustomed gringa stomach could not tolerate.
Unlike the 1 in 8 people on the planet that drink dirty, unsafe water every day, me having nothing to drink was entirely my fault. I was thirsty, achy, trembling, dehydrated and sick because I had been stupid to take safe, accessible water for granted, to assume it would be available somewhere along the road, instead of buying it in a grocery store or larger tienda, where the water for sale is purified.
In the end, my stupidity cost me nothing other than an uncomfortable ride back to the capital city. I could chose, young and healthy that I was, to avoid drinking unsafe water. I did not have to choose between a certain death of thirst that day or a probable threat of death due to waterborne disease the day after, which of course is not a choice at all. But millions of people are forced to make this non-choice of a choice every day.
No one should ever be forced to drink water that kills. We serve the God of who offers us living water, who cried wearily for a drink as he fought for his last breaths. How then, can we let others go thirsty?
Katherine Pater is a recovering Irish dance instructor from Wisconsin. She is currently a first-year Master of Divinity Student at Harvard Divinity School who is pursuing ordination in the PC(USA) denomination.
