Give us water that we may drink

(originally appeared in Thinking mission, July 2001)

The Revd Helen Griffiss, former USPG staff, shares her experience in India to show the impact of clean water and how the availability can speak to people in many parts of the world of salvation!

Two years ago I wrote:

‘I spent the first month of this year with the desert people of north-west India.  Invillages where there had been a water-harvesting programme in operation for a few seasons, I saw sings of hope – the villagers were confident that they could continue to feed themselves and their animals, providing ghere are good  monsson rains in July.  In other remote areas where there is little or no water technology, I sw worn-out despondent people, always greeting us with the same heart-rending plea: ‘Give us water’ as if we could magic it in an instant.  The contrast was stark; the people who had enough were lively, and eager to work; those without sufficient water were only partly living – their expressions, their movements were altogether different’.

The villagers in the desert who were working alongside NGOs on water-harvesting and irrigation programmes had been raised out of their meagre existence into a way of life which was full of promise.  Their collective consciousness had been alerted to long-term planning and hope for the future.  They were able to perceive their own needs for developing the community: training in primary health care, education for both boys and girls, capitalise on their indigenous husbandry skills, plant trees, harvest more crops to feed themselves and their animals, market their produce locally to avoid the dysfunctional effect of the menfolk migrating to towns and cities every year in search of work. 

I felt that I was witnessing the resurrection life more profoundly than ever before, with its free-flowing, energising spirit, its tributaries of richly diverse opportunities spring from the primary source: water…

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