After my mother passed away last July, I could not apply my writing skills to good use, and I had often found myself tapping away on my keyboard, eyes peeled on the screen,writing one senseless article after another and after a while, I just stopped writing altogether.
Trying to balance my job as an operations manager and freelance writer, I was beginning to burn out so, since the latter wasn’t giving me any benefits, monetary or otherwise, I decided to take a break from it and pick up at some point when I could mentally come to terms with the loss of my mother.
However, that was all about to change when a last-minute business trip to the United Kingdom came up.
It was rather an exciting prospect, travelling to another country. Perhaps I would gain a little inspiration and maybe Icould pick up my ‘proverbial pen’ again and find something decent to write about. But, looking at my itinerary, there wouldn’t be any spare time to soak in some of the culture orenjoy eating at a half decent restaurant. It was February anyway, so the English weather would be a bit off-putting to say the least.
Having arrived at Oliver Tambo and shopped at the Duty Free, I boarded my UK flight and bundled my shopping bags in the storage compartment above my seat and sat down next to my plane-mate with whom I was going to travel alongside for eleven hours and forty minutes. I was eager to get to knowher but always felt quite awkward meeting someone new. However, I was pleasantly surprised that she was as equally eager to start a conversation.
After chatting a while, I learned that her name was Joanna and that she had left her childhood home in Cape Town and had immigrated to England. However, she had just returned to attend her father’s funeral and was returning home. I was grateful that we had something in common, both having lost a parent.
I really wanted to engage in a meaningful conversation, and I thought that sharing this commonality would be a great starting point. I didn’t really want to pry though, so I started with a simple question, “How are your friends in Cape Town coping with the drought?”
“They have five minutes to shave, shower and shampoo. Bath water has to be reused to wash dishes and water the garden. Some are even queuing to buy the precious liquid.” She responded.
I knew only too well what it was like not having water come out of the taps. “The dry continent of Africa.” I spouted, like it was some quote out of a book I had read.
She paused thoughtfully before saying anything, “You know, I don’t’ think that there should be a water problem in Cape Town. Whilst having lived there for some twenty-five years,I’ve found that typically, they have two years of heavy rains, followed by two years of light rain.”
My eyebrows raised, “To be fair, the general populace is always growing in Africa so surely this should be the usual case of supply and demand?” I asked. “Also, Cape Town is surrounded by two oceans; shouldn’t the government budget for desalination plants in times of severe droughts like the one Cape Town is having now?”
“Why should they have to?”
I stared at her, quite shocked. “What are governments elected for?”
“People are always looking to the government to solve their problems instead of being part of the solution.” She said simply, looking at me like I was ignorant.
I was about to be educated, “There are approximately 3.5 million people living in Cape Town and if all of them saved 1litre of water per day, that’s 3.5 million litres a day, which isover 1.2 billion a year, do you get the picture?”
“How do you save something that just isn’t forthcoming?” I asked, wondering if the same economics of scale applied to water as well as money. “You need to get it before you can save it.” Was it me or was she just trying to be argumentative?
She shook her head, “We do get rain water, which is free, and we can save it by storing the runoff in storage tanks instead of it washing away down a drain pipe. This water can be used in dryer months. There is no water problem, I promise.”
“What about climate change, what if there is little rain or no rain?” I asked, realising she probably didn’t believe that climate change was actually ‘a thing’.
We talked about underground water, sewage, ecosystems and anything I could think of to win the argument but whatever I put forward, she had an answer for everything.
Despite our differences, Joanna was kind and accommodating. She helped me, trying to get my small TV screen to work and also charged my phone using her powerpack.
I thought I had made a friend for life but when we eventually landed at Heathrow, Joanna merely retrieved her hand-luggage and by the time we reached the terminal, she was gone, and I never saw her again.
During my trip, I kept remembering our conversation, so to quell my ignorance and feed my curiosity, I decided to conduct some research on climate change and also reviewCape Town’s rainfall figures for the past twenty-five years. I couldn’t find any statistical site that gave any evidence to justify her claims.
Funnily enough though, after two years of severe drought, the rains fell on Cape Town during the winter months that followed and had satisfied their water requirements for that season.
I wondered if Joanna had some kind of prophetic knowledge or whether she had done any fact checking at all.
One thing I did realise was, that my urge to write had returned. Suffice to say, my keyboard has never been the same since.