When was the last time you drank water straight from the taps? That may be decades ago or maybe never if you have lived most of your life in the city. Water, which is a major component of the human body, is a very important resource. Reader’s Digest recently had an issue whose main theme is the status of water in Asia and it’s so relevant today even the latest 007 movie “Quantum of Solace,” made mention.
I’m am not 100% sure, but I believe there’s no place here in the Philippines where you can safely drink directly from a water tap. That’s why inside city dwellings, large blue containers with water bought from a water purifying station or those portable purifying contraptions connected to water taps are common. Rural areas like provinces have also adopted this trend and in just a few years, water refilling/purifying stations have sprung up. I don’t know, but there might be a conspiracy from lawmakers and businessmen as bottled water turned up to be a very profitable business. Recent news in Manila indicates water borne diseases due to poor management of water distribution systems and a few years back, I think it was “hepatitis” (due to the drinking water system) that shamed a respected university.
So, what is the government doing? We’ll for starters, it assigned Prospero Pichay as Water Czar, which is obviously payback for his support for PGMA. I don’t expect too much from him since he’s a politician whose type is common in our government who won’t lift a finger unless somebody complains or maybe even if some would complain. He may be the Pichay that won’t “prosper” with tap water.
Enough with my ramblings… here is an interesting e-mail I received from my sister months ago…
Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Hello everyone,
Na-feature sa news yung homeroom teacher ni Enki ngayong 2nd grade.
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=7386177&version=1&locale=EN-US
This is a class project for one of their "units of inquiry" under the International Baccalaureate Program - "Water is a finite resource." The class footage is Enki's current class (sabi ni enki nakita niya ang kamay niya hahaha!) but the kids interviewed are from last year's second grade class. I'm excited to see what Enki's batch might do.
Napanood ko ang complete video documentation for the school, maganda talaga ang pag-tackle nila sa topic ng water, dahil tayo, nakaka-relate sa reality na ito, pero karamihan sa mga bata dito, wala sa immediate consciousness nila since it is so cheap and readily available here in the US, especially with bottled water being the staple here - hardly anyone drinks from the tap anymore.
There were a lot of activities and workshops leading up to the grand project. Although the video clip mentions mostly their fund-raising efforts, the focus of the curricular unit was on internalizing the message and letting their beliefs and convictions about water as a resource manifest in their actions - from simple things like being judicious in how much to open a faucet, to directly contributing to a water installation project in Columbia. And that's where I think the school is doing an extra good job - by training the kids early on to live what they learn. In an affluent society (I know, Nanay, this term is debatable but humor me na lang, I mean "materially abundant") like in the US, it is easy to be generous because people have too much and they know it. Thus there are so many charities here, and so many charitable people. So you see the news clip focusing more on the fund-raising project, which was indeed a wonderful gift from the children. But for me, the more important worth of the whole endeavor was the attitude developed in the kids. It is far more challenging to be compassionate. I believe this is something that has to be nourished from a very young age. Generosity is just one of its corollaries, but not the end-all. Generosity borne out of pity and self-abundance is still a good deed, but also a dead-end. What the world needs is more empathy and compassion, then humanity would have a fighting chance. I imagine not all the kids "got it". But I'm sure a majority of them did. That's where the hope of the future lies. Amyendahin natin si JPRizal - ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan kung pinalaki silang may malasakit sa kapwa. Compassion=malasakit (literally, "pseudo-aching", looking at the etymology, it actually seems closer to the meaning of empathy) while pity=awa, right? Magkaiba di ba?
Nagsimula ito na kwento lang ng isang over-zealous nanay, ngayon nagmukha nang blog entry. My rambling has lead to some good sentences, perhaps I will turn this into an essay/article some day. Kuyang, i-guest mo ako minsan sa blog mo hehe.
aniway
chemist by profession, socio-anthropologist at heart
