A letter from Doug Orbaker in Nicaragua
June 2012
Rivers of Living Water
Doug kayaking the Ohiopyle Falls on the Youghigheny River in Pennsylvania.
For years I have been an avid canoeist and kayaker. I have paddled most of the major whitewater rivers of the eastern United States and a few rivers in Peru and Costa Rica. Since moving to Nicaragua I haven't paddled as much, but I manage to get into my kayak and paddle a little every time I get to the U.S. I love the sight of fast-moving, freely flowing water. Sitting by a river is, for me, the perfect place for prayerful meditation.
I miss seeing water like that here. Most of the rivers I see in Nicaragua are almost dry for most of the year, but they change to dangerous raging torrents for a few hours after a heavy rain. Many of them would be great for paddling if they had a dependable stream flow, but they are dangerous at flood stage.
Even worse is the contamination. Almost all the surface water that I see smells bad, like garbage or sewage. But people continue to use it for washing and cooking because there is no other option. Even in places where there is a “potable” water system, the water sometimes comes out of the tap brown and cloudy. The people of the communities often let it sit in a bucket for a few hours waiting for it to settle and then dip water off the top to use for washing and cooking.
There are almost as many systems for trying to clean up this water as there are groups interested in the problem. Some of these are larger, more expensive systems that can produce enough clean water for several hundred people. Others are smaller, single-family filters that fit in a corner of the kitchen and produce 10 or 12 gallons of clean water a day—enough for the cooking, drinking needs of most families. There is no one perfect system for every community and situation. At CEPAD we have worked with several different alternative systems in an effort to help the communities where we work to have safer, cleaner water. Since CEPAD works primarily in very small, isolated rural communities, we often find that small single-family filters are more effective than larger communitywide systems.
I remember reading about 20 years ago someone's prediction that “the wars of the 20th century have been fought over land and oil; the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water.” I really didn't understand that at the time, but I certainly do now. I've seen even small communities and organizations torn apart by struggling over water.
CEPAD worked for several years in seven small communities in the mountainous North, organizing local community development committees and then a legally constituted association for the development of that area. One of those communities (the largest and the one farthest down the mountainside) has a “potable” water system. There is a small dam that stores the water and a single pipe down through the community. The dam and the spring that feeds it are on the private property of one person who had paid for the building of the dam and contributed largely for the pipe. The system provides water, but it is not filtered or treated in any way and often runs very muddy. It would be the ideal location for one of the larger systems such as those done through Living Waters For the World.
The association for the development of that area would have liked to have such a system and sell clean water at low cost to the community, but there were some hard feelings between some of the officers of the association and the landowner of the dam and spring. The landowner accused some of the officers of corruptly profiting from the work of the association and refused to let them profit from “his” water. He threatened to destroy his dam rather than let the association make any money from the water. The project idea stopped abruptly, and the community (including the landowner) still has muddy water.
I often am reminded of the old Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I hear people quoting this old proverb frequently, but it really doesn't fit the situation in Nicaragua. The problem in development is not that people don't know how to fish, it is that they have been denied access to the rivers. The water is too often controlled by a single person, a small wealthy group, or a foreign corporation. The current government of Nicaragua is working to change this through establishing local water-access committees, but it is a slow process of regaining local control over the sources of water.
Nicaragua is blessed with two large lakes, the largest bodies of fresh water between the Great Lakes of the U.S.-Canadian border and Lake Titicaca of the Peru-Bolivian border. A few years ago there was a proposal from a U.S. company to build a 24-inch pipeline from the larger of those lakes to the west coast in order to load tankers of fresh water for southern California. However, those lakes drain naturally to the east coast through the San Juan River and residents along the river feared that the decreased river flow would damage their ability to travel or earn a living. The project is on hold, but not forgotten. Eventually the immense purchasing power of U.S. corporations and the demand for green lawns, bottled water, and water for other uses in southern California will bring the idea around again. With such a large demand for water and so much water used by wealthy large users, the little water that is left is bound to be a source of struggle among the poor people who are left.
As I remember the beautiful rivers I have paddled and the ease with which we enjoy water in the U.S., I long to get back into my kayak. But I also long to see my friends in Nicaragua have access to clean, healthy water for their crops and themselves.
Doug Orbaker
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 11
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