Last week rain finally fell on Portland, and my garden, and the roads I ride, but every drop of it was lapped up with joy and welcome - like a friend long absent.Nearly daily I read articles addressing water issues which 'ping' my thinking about how to approach and communicate the our planet's growing water concern. Like the water problem itself, the solution for me photographically is equally elusive. Most of those stories, like this -Water reform is 'needed in Asia' - on the BBC news online, go unnoticed amidst the global panic over economies, wars, terrorists, etc. Ironically, in the coming years, regardless of how our car companies fare, and what leader is this week threatening his neighbors, water will remain at the core of our economic and security woes, it IS our woe. Yet for now, and likely until the day the tap runs dry in the homes of America and Europe, it's a problem to postpone. In the mean time:
- 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water
- 3 900 children die every day from water borne diseases
- 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation
Over on my Japanese gardening blog (diary) I made note of the rain returning here to "my" little planet - it was a very personal reunion - both to my thirsty little green friends and my water bill, which has soared in trying to keep the little green friends alive. And that has made me think and post this blog - water isn't personal enough - "enough". Enough is the key word. How do I create images that tell what "enough" is, means, feels like, to those impacted today, so that those who are not will sit up and say, "hang on, we have a nightmare on our doorstep!" We simply, we the American/Europeans of the world, don't face the problem in a personal way daily or any day usually, we don't walk miles for a gallon or two of "clean" water, we don't have our children dieing agonizing deaths in our arms from ghastly sanitation conditions, so it doesn't really exist as a problem.
Hang on, be right back....
Whew, thanks.
I was really thirsty spouting all that, needed a glass of water, wow, that was easy, just turn on the tap, fill the glass.
Back to the blog....
In search of a solution, both to my creative challenge and, more importantly, to the real challenge, I wonder if it doesn't lie in a garden a top a mountain chain in the Highlands of Paupa New Guinea. There 25 years ago I met the Huli people, the "Wigmen of Papua", the spectacular fellow in the picture above, in their tiny mountain valley high above the world and it's problems. Where the Huli live is near Eden, the Tagali Valley , but off the map, most maps anyway (Google map it - it's a blank spot). The soil is lush, alive, and the rain falls with Swiss-like regularity. Literally, stick anything in the ground and it will grow. And that's what has me thinking. From childhood Hulis are gardeners - every man, woman and child works in the gardens. So pervasive is gardening in the Huli culture that even young men passing through the bachelor cult igari haroli must succeed as gardeners - specifically they must grow an orchid-looking bog iris plant (padume). Durning this period they also learn a series of chants important to their passage into manhood, one of them is the "Water Chant". (Women may likely have similar passages but as a male I was not privvy to them.)
For other, but similar reasons I use to thinnk wouldn't it be incredibly valuable if when entering college every student was handed a small seed or seedling and we said "here, care for this and see it grow, and at graduation, in addition to your 'other' studies, you must present this little plant, alive and flourishing, to graduate." Imagine how that would change our lives? Imagine how that would change the way we view life? Imagine future generations of young people who actually value life?
And now I wonder - Imagine how that would make us view every drop of water we use on this planet?
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