by Fern Shaw | Mar 30, 2015 | Water
It would seem that ancient methods are best when it comes to saving water in a ‘Modern Age’.
*Recently, The Stockholm Water Prize was awarded to Rajendra Singh, who is known as the ‘Water Man of India’. Rajendra’s methods have brought water to over a thousand villages in the country.
The judges of the prize say his methods have also prevented floods, restored soil and rivers, and brought back wildlife. They also maintained that his technique is cheap, simple, and that his ideas should be followed worldwide.
Rajendra uses a modern version of the ancient Indian technique of rainwater harvesting.
It involves building low-level banks of earth to hold back the flow of water in the wet season and allow water to seep into the ground for future use.
Rajendra first trained as a medic, but when he took up a post in a rural village in arid Rajasthan he was told the greatest need was not health care but drinking water.
Groundwater had been sucked dry by farmers, and as water disappeared, crops failed, rivers, forests and wildlife disappeared and people left for the towns.
“When we started our work, we were only looking at the drinking water crisis and how to solve that,” Mr Singh said.
“Today our aim is higher. This is the century of exploitation, pollution and encroachment. To stop all this, to convert the war on water into peace, that is my life’s goal.”
Similarly, on another continent, adaptations to an ancient manual water pump made using readily available and replaceable materials has ensured that the fondly named ‘Elephant Pump’ has been bringing safe potable water to villages and communities throughout Africa for more than 10 years.
Ian Thorpe, co-founder of The Africa Trust, was awarded the prestigious St Andrews Medal for the Environment in 2005 and The Elephant Pump received the World Bank Development Marketplace award for Water, Sanitation and Energy a year later.
As with Rajendra’s initial start as a medic, Ian started out teaching in Zimbabwe, but this soon changed when he witnessed the terrible conditions the villagers lived in and the hours spent every day retrieving water many miles away – water that was mostly unsafe to drink.
At the time of winning the St. Andrew’s Medal, around 250,000 people were already using the pump and today over two million people use the Elephant Pump every day. This figure is growing each month thanks to funding from AquAid and others.
There are lessons to be learnt here and what seems to be clear indicators that time honoured old methods are what are needed in supplying a large portion of the world’s population with the tools for a safe and sustainable water supply.
Gentlemen, I salute you both!
*excerpts from an article in the BBC Science and Environment section by Roger Harrabin.
by Fern Shaw | Mar 30, 2015 | Water, water cooler
I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend has raised its invasively shaped head on the worldwide web in the last few years.
The every single day of the year allocated to some cause or other trend. Frankly, I find it exhausting. There seems to be a post 20th Century gene that’s automatically wired into any being that has access to said worldwide web, never mind all forms of social media. I call it ‘The Post Modern Guilt Gene’.
‘Why the Guilt Gene?’ you make ask. Well, if you have a conscience – whether it’s vastly overdeveloped (like mine) or even if it’s just an infinitesimal smidgen of your primordial make-up – there seems to be a knee jerk response to every assigned day. That’s until you give yourself a stern talking to, otherwise you’ll be splabbing to all and sundry on days like … wait for it … Forgive Your Parents Day. I tiny goat you not. There is an actual bona fide day of this and it was today. I listened in horror and some disbelief as people from all over called, texted and e-mailed the radio station about what they had forgiven their parents about. Granted, a visceral Schadenfreude part of me did gasp and ooo while Pamela from Peterborough regaled all about how she had tried to forgive her mother for burning her hair with a homemade perm in 1985, but then common sense prevailed. THIS Day of Forgiving was neither relevant, nor important and certainly not worth clogging up the airwaves (or any other wave for that matter).
There are of course, aside from commemorative public holidays, days that actually are significant and are worth marking or remembering, but more often than not, they’re just silly. A few examples:
Towel Day – May 25
International Talk Like a Pirate Day – September 19. (Okay, I’ll admit, I’d probably participate).
No Trousers On The Tube Day – every year around January. (Do you really need to know what day exactly? Really?)
The aforementioned ‘Forgive your Parent’s Day’ – March 18, and not to forget, the all-important;
Fettucine Alfredo Day – February 7.
Perhaps I’m being irreverent (my usual resting state) and a bit mean-spirited, especially considering the tangents my brain takes me (and subsequently, you) on, but for my sanity, I think there will be a number of Days that I won’t be observing, commemorating or even acknowledging this year. Or any year for the foreseeable future for that matter.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve very N.B. matters in mind, as I hare off to the water cooler to make the water gloomph.
Hold the phone! How about an International Make your Water Cooler Water Gloomph Day? Think it’ll catch on?
by Fern Shaw | Mar 9, 2015 | Water
Once upon a time there was a family – the dad of who had a dream. The dad in the family had dreamt from when he was a nipper that one day he would have an ocean going yacht.
So that is what the Dad did. He worked hard and scrimped and saved, then he retired and he finally had his yacht built.
Not just any yacht, mind you, this impressive vessel was a 54ft. teak yacht, with 10 berths and just as smart and spanking as anyone could imagine.
The yacht was built in Taiwan and shipped (ha) to Piraeus in Greece.
The Dad and the Mom went on a sailing course. The children did not. Delivery of the yacht was taken by the dad and then on the next trip, the family boarded the yacht in Piraeus and started their great big watery Mediterranean adventure. It was September. Unbeknown to the family, September in the Med is Meltemi season.
According to Sailing Issues, ‘the Meltemi wind results from a high pressure system laying over the Balkan/Hungary area and a relatively low pressure system over Turkey. The Meltemi brings with it harsh sailing conditions and doesn’t necessarily die out at the end of the day and can easily last more than three to six days.’
Which is all fine and fair enough, but hindsight and all that. Suffice to say the family’s adventure turned into more of a trial come survival-of-the-ignorant type outing. When they weren’t crashing into harbour walls; getting their anchor fouled; almost being arrested by various Greek islands police for squishing small boats (not on purpose), the yacht with all crew on board almost sank one horrible night just outside the teensiest island harbour ever because of the Meltemi raging across the bay.
Did I mention that the reason the crew had to stay up all night was to keep watch between two points of light in the tossing waves as the yacht’s anchor dragged back and forth? Or the fact that the reason the anchor was dragging was because the locals knew what the storm would do to a tethered boat in the wrong place? Or that they sent the family across the bay into unprotected waters because the yacht was too big and the Russian fishing vessels needed the space in the teensy harbour? No? Well, fact being stranger than fiction, that’s what happened.
You might not have picked up that this story is related with a tinge of humour, but it was actually very funny – almost like episodes of Carry on in the Med, however, that said, I wouldn’t wish most of these experiences on any ocean sailors. It was, in retrospect, a huge learning curve and all of the mishaps were far outweighed by the most incredible experiences, sights and sounds which stay very firmly rooted in memory.
*Blogista’s postscript – the yacht was first named ‘Shimi’ (Tibetan for ‘cat’) but when another yacht with the same name was found registered with Lloyds, ‘Shimi’ became ‘Mavournin’. (Mavournin is Irish for ‘my darling’).
by Fern Shaw | Mar 9, 2015 | Water
‘You must wait for an hour after eating to go for a swim. If you do not, you could get a stomach cramp and drown.’
Does anyone else remember that old chestnut? Absolute torture for us otters who literally lived in the water from sunup to sundown in the summer months.
Despite this dire warning, it seems that an instance of drowning caused by swimming on a full stomach has never been documented.
Close the door behind you, were you born in a stable?!
Weirdly enough, where I grew up, we did have a stable and even weirder, the door couldn’t close. Take that, parent!
Even more peculiar is that most of the stables I’ve seen – all have split doors and they’re mostly closed to keep the gee gees in.
If you swallow an apple seed, an apple tree will grow in your stomach and you will die.
Almost positive there have been zero reported cases of a tree growing inside of a human.
If you squint your eyes like that, they’ll stay that way.
Ya, well, sucks boo to you matey, I did it plenty and my eyes are just fine, thank you!
Eat your carrots; they’ll make you see in the dark.
In retrospect, I’m not quite sure why I never puzzled this obvious silly out, as we had rabbits at one stage and I don’t ever remember them being particularly ninja-ish and nocturnal, by any stretch of the imagination!
If you go outside with wet hair, you’ll catch a cold.
Outside doesn’t give us colds. People give us colds. But, hey.
by Fern Shaw | Mar 9, 2015 | Water
I cannot, for the life of me, when I think of the word Wasabi, say it as it’s written. I always martial-art-movie the pronunciation. And I do mean always. Say it with me now,’Wa-saaaaaabi!’
I have wondered whether wasabi was a chilli, pepper or mustard, but apparently it’s a horseradish. According to Wiki:
Wasabi is a plant member of the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbage, horseradish, and mustard. It is also called Japanese horseradish, although horseradish is a different plant (which is often used as a substitute for wasabi). Its stem is used as a condiment and has an extremely strong pungency. Its hotness is more akin to that of a hot mustard than that of the capsaicin in a chilli pepper, producing vapours that stimulate the nasal passages more than the tongue. The plant grows naturally along stream beds in mountain river valleys in Japan. The two main cultivars in the marketplace are E. japonicum ‘Daruma’ and ‘Mazuma’, but there are many others.
So, that’s clarified then. I did always wonder, as I’m okay with a little bit of bite – chilli wise – but I far more appreciate flavour over my digestive tract screaming like a girl and up and running away in fear when I eat something hot.
This is why I’m not so great with is hot mustard. It’s also where I fall spectacularly short in the stiff upper lip category of having the de rigeur hot English mustard with my rare roast beef.
Horseradish I can still do, but the glaring yellow of HEM, no. (The colour alone should be sufficient warning that your mouth will qualify for its very own ‘scorched earth’ tag.)
Then in wanders Wa-saaaaaabi! with its deceptively fresh, pastel-green colour that says, ’Hot, me? Naah, I’m all spring time meadows and buttercups – perfectly harmless.’
Blithely unaware, you mix a blob in with your soy sauce or you (‘you’ being the crazy, no taste-buds at ALL daredevils) smear it commando style onto your sushi and pop a piece into your mouth. Then the fire engine alarms start clanging, your nose receptors scream for mercy and your throat clamps shut.
I read recently that more often than not we’re not really eating real wasabi, and that the real deal isn’t even that hot. Also, the heat from real fresh wasabi, when grated, doesn’t last for more than about 15 minutes.
Genuine wasabi is pretty expensive – apparently a lot of it that we eat is a mixture of dyed mustard and horseradish root – which would explain a lot.
Whatever I’m ingesting, I’ve learnt to keep a jug of water on the table whenever Ojiisan Wasabi is paying a visit. Oh, and I think the winter warmer trick here is obvious. If you eat enough of the stuff, it’ll keep your head warm, your nasal passages clear and your brain all on fire like nobody’s business – you certainly won’t notice the cold.
