Yesterday it rained like crazy in Tunisia. I love rain, it’s so great and watching the rain drops fall on the ground, the sound they make and even the touch of rain on your skin is just incredible.
There are years when a country lacks the bless of rain, you can see all people complaining and blaming God or nature for not having enough water. And when it comes in big quantities causing floods, you hear all people also complaining for the loss of crops, or the ruins of their places, or the dirt left at their house doors …etc. What made me get to this idea that I’m sure a lot would find crazy or childish in a way but I wont lose anything if I shared it with you .
I thought that it’s true rain becomes a danger when it causes floods and blocks streets and ruins everything, no matter how good the infrastructure is, when it rains too heavy everything will be flooded and a lot of things will be damaged. And the next day you’ll find responsible people organizing the pumps that will take all excess waters and blow them I don’t know where. The point is the waters will become dirty and wont be used, they’ll be pumped away and WASTED instead.
So I thought why doesn’t every citizen in every country help the authorities control excess waters, use them personally and even send them to countries that need waters.
How, well here comes the nice part, this could be applied through water containers spread by people and authorities as well, spread all over the country. I got the idea from my parents. Back in time when I was a little kid, I remember when it used to rain , mom and dad used to make us play this very useful and great game, they called it “water collection”, the game consists of any means of collecting water: bowls, bottles, plastic boxes, jars, vases, and anything deep. It’s played in the rain season. Each member chooses something to collect waters and places it anywhere he/she likes. Our parents chose the best places of course as they were more aware what part would enable to collect water better. And the next day at the same time we placed our things, we get back to them to see who collected most, and of course we kids always won as our parents always poured from their containers into ours 😉 Now the next step of the game is to suggest ways to use the collected water, some would use them to water the indoor plants, others would suggest using it as drinking water for the birds, or in cooking or washing and cleaning and so on. As for me I always used it to increase the water level in the aquarium we had 😛 I thought the fish would be happy to experience swimming in rain water, lol, poor fish they’d be swimming in peace and then I come and pour the water and they’d all go like: bug, bug, bug… and there’ll be kind of a “water-twister” in there as I poured strongly, and the happier I was, the stronger I poured 😛
Anyway, back to the main idea, I thought applying this game would really be helpful. Why don’t we spread containers on the roof, balconies, put some on the window edges…etc, rainwater is pure we could use it in any way. Why don’t authorities build certain containers and collective tanks and spread them in streets and farms. Other than that when a farm is flooded, instead of pumping the excess water in the sea, we could clarify it and use it, if it was more than enough we could send it to parts that weren’t lucky enough to get enough water average. The rain is falling anyway, and there might be floods no matter what we do, but it makes a difference when we use at least 2% of the falling rain at first, with time we’ll figure out better ways to collect and use the water, there has to be a first step though, even if that step was so simple. On the other hand we teach everyone to care for the environment and play a role in saving the wasted waters and using it. We implant the environmental awareness in our children, we teach them that teamwork helps in many ways.
It’s just a thought, maybe if I was specialized in environmental issues I’d be able to apply that theory some day, but I hope the ones who are specialized would think of something similar to avoid the terrible loss of that pure water and benefit from it in the best way possible.