Gratitude Monday: The blessing of water

My friend Danger Girl brought this story from Forbes to my attention recently. You’ve no doubt seen the videos of Shark Cat—the feline that likes to ride a Roomba and lets its humans dress it in a shark outfit.

(If you haven’t—you probably might want to check your broadband connection. ‘Cause it would have been hard to miss.)

The Forbes writer makes the case that Shark-Roomba-Cat may be the quintessential depiction of the wealth of America—roomy, well-equipped kitchen; high-tech robotic floor cleaning device; people with enough disposable income to buy shark sweaters for their pets.

DG didn’t object to that characterization, but she did point out that many Americans are not in fact represented by that video; people in their millions who only dream of having the space and equipment of this kitchen. And the multiple bedrooms, working bathroom and suburban yard that presumably surround the Roomba-riding cat.

She’s spot on, of course.

But let me add one element to the discussion, which is the subject of my Gratitude Monday today, which isn’t mentioned in the article:

With some exceptions, the vast majority of Americans have access to clean, potable water, and are not in danger of contracting or dying from numerous water-borne diseases. Assuming your own plumbing is operational, you can turn on the tap and can drink whatever comes out of it without greater fear than that it might taste funny. You don't even think about things like cholera, typhoid, dysentery or a dozen other hazards.

That is a triumph of technology and civic services.

When I moved to Korea, it was in the middle of a cholera epidemic. Since I did not live on base, and bottled water was not at that time the universal thing it is today, I had two choices for consumption: either drop purification tablets into a pitcher of water (which turned it a shade of brown that made you wonder whether the color alone was killing the bacteria), or boil it. For ten minutes. On a hot plate.

Well, okay—three choices: tablets, boiling or take my chances with cholera.

The Korean government occasionally sent round loud-speaker trucks to urge people in the apartment complex to get their cholera shots (which I found very Orwellian). This was not in any way a joke to anyone. But they didn’t have the infrastructure for delivering clean water to the populace. Our neighborhood (maybe most of Seoul) had open sewers. If you've never experienced a banjo ditch in monsoon-hot/wet summer...well, consider yourself fortunate.

(Actually—I was in one of the “luxury” buildings of the complex. We had indoor toilets. Residents of six out of the twelve six-story walk-ups used outhouses.)

So, long after my time there, I am still deeply grateful that I do not have to boil water before I drink it, and that I don't have to worry about killer diseases shooting out of the taps. I know there are millions and millions of people in the world who do not share in this blessing.