Seems like the easiest thing in the world to get, water. It comes out of your tap, stores give it away at fountain, even resturants do not charge for a tall glass of it.
You'd think, with our bodies being made up of 60% water, and our brains and hearts being more than 70% water, that it would be considered a substance so necessary for human life, it would be a human right.
Some do not agree.
"Declaring water a right is extreme. Water is a foodstuff best valued and distributed as a part of the free market."
-Peter Brabeck, former CEO at Nestle'.
He's still a Chairman there.
We live alongside one of the largest freshwater lakes on Earth. 10% of all the planets freshwater is in that lake.
But don't think you can just drink from it. A couple of years ago a German shipping company was caught dumping refuse into the lake.
And Trump has cut funding to the Great Lakes Restoration, an initiative to clean up the pollution left by ahem previous generations.
But I digress.
Back to the point
What does water have to do with homelessness?
The answer is, pretty much everything.
I was personally fortunate enough to have an R.V. as our safe space. So, we needed water for the dogs and us to drink, cooking, cleaning and washing up. Especially in hot summer months.
We did not have a place to hook up and use the water system on the camper, and the previous owner warned me not to use the onboard tank as it will leak.
So all of those needs had to be met externally, including a means to cool down. Minnesota is an emo state. One day it will be 40° and the next it's 90° with a chance of tornadoes.
We spent a lot of time in the lakes, keeping ourselves and the dogs cool. I taught the kids to use sand to scrub their skin clean. Haha, our skin was so soft last summer!
I would purchase ten one gallon bottles of water every couple of days. Certain grocery stores will let you refill them for a large discount, .39 cents each.
These we would fill our plastic drink cups with, cook rice and macaronie and even take rudimentary showers.
It felt criminal, hiding behind the camper in the middle of the night so as not to get caught washing my child's hair.
Getting the water itself was an ordeal. The maintenance guy for the shopping center the grocer was in would come and park right next to my camper and wait for me to come back out and leave.
Does that sound paranoid? I'd agree if it had happened once, or twice or maybe even half a dozen times. But it was every. Single. Time.
That wasn't the only type of harassment from him, but he is a blog all to himself.
Another issue, with no running water, was that I had no working potty on board with three little kids.
Yikes.
Our city has a large homeless population, and I'm sure you've all seen these signs now and then...
In our city they're everywhere. And the persons working at such establishments cannot be pursuaded, even by a five-year-old with this face, frantically doing the potty dance with tears in her eyes.
We became well known by the staff of Walmart, which was terribly embarassing, but we lived through that shame.
When the kids started school I had to tell them I had no address to give, and they responded by offering us their showers. Oh, to take a hot shower again! So simple, and so fucking vital. I cried, the kindness was so welcome.
So please, if you think about it, bring water to your local foodshelf. Every once in a rare while the foodshelf here would have some. Two 20 oz bottles per family.
You have no idea how much peace of mind you will bring to a family in need.
If you made it this far, thank you. 💜