Where’s the Water?
Murrieta, CA
2024, Junior, Creative Writing
Climate change is becoming more and more of a pressing problem each year, and it is affecting the whole planet and those who live in it – us. Even though there are those who still deny that climate change is really “that big of a deal,” climate change is fiercely making its mark and has been doing so for a while now, especially in the last few decades. The summers have been feeling exceptionally hot and the winters exceptionally cold, and, for my extended family living in Monterrey Mexico, the summers are the ones that are particularly dangerous, and this summer doesn’t look like it’s going to be any exception. Monterrey has always been rather hot, as a part of northeastern Mexico, but it’s climate change that is making its droughts longer, more frequent, and especially potent.
Water is now commonly cut off for periods of time in many households, including those of my relatives. I remember being so excited to be visiting my grandparents and staying at their house, only to find out that the following morning we would all have to either take showers using the four plastic water bottles we had left from the plane trip, or to wait until the water came back by noon. The first time this happened that I can still recall was in the summer of 2018, when I was eight years old, and like clockwork every summer we went my grandparents and others would be expressing apologies that the water had been cut off and we had to limit our usage as much as possible because the emergency water tank would not last long. When the water did come, it was precious, and any use of it had to be made as quickly as possible because wasting water was literally like sending an extremely valuable resource down the drain. In 2022, I remember being strictly told that the toilet was to be flushed only once all of us (my parents, brother, and I) were all finished, so one flush per four people. It was gross, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have to be done in order to conserve the emergency water from the water tank, because the water wasn’t coming back until in a day or so. I remember my grandpa teaching me how to take an efficient shower using one bucket of water without ever turning the valve. I had stared into the little white bucket, wondering how I could possibly fully clean myself using just that. Doing this kind of thing is necessary, he would tell me, switching my attention from the bucket to him again. No water means no life.
It wasn’t just a lack of water that was pressing down on us. It was unusually hot and humid too, so you had the unpleasant sensation that you were being pressed by heat from all sides while somehow breathing warm water. If you fanned yourself, you only got more hot air. Prices for a simple plastic water bottle were going up, and finding them in the first place was difficult even at the local stores. Everybody was frantically getting themselves emergency water tanks for their homes because the water being cut was now a regular thing and they needed to be prepared… for a new “normal.” One of my great-aunts, who lives farther from the borders of the city than some of my other relatives, only gets about three to five hours of running water in her house a day, and the water only runs in the wee hours of the morning. It’s always from about 3am to 6am, if it runs at all. For the rest of the day, her house has no running water, which is really very stressful for my poor aunt. Every day that summer, she tells us, she sets her alarm to ring at 4 if not earlier and she frantically goes about filling container after container from the weak, glitchy pulse of water that comes out of the kitchen sink to use for basic needs like washing dishes, bathing, cleaning, and even flushing the toilet. The last few times we visited her house during the summer, we could see containers of water scattered all over the house, as well as dozens of little plastic water bottles she buys big packs of if she can find them every time she visits the store.
Unfortunately, my aunt isn’t the one that has it worst. While my cousins play downstairs, I read in the newspaper that my grandparents regularly buy (El Norte) about how the people were protesting angrily at the government for cutting their running water so much after promising to help them. At the dinner table, there is tense conversation after tense conversation about the neighborhoods forced to go weeks without running water, some people deciding to drink from their almost-dry river for survival. My parents keep telling me about how lucky my brother and I are that we didn’t have to grow up there, but that makes me worry about my relatives who remain even more.
The water crisis may not seem as real in the comforts of my own home in California, but whenever I visit Monterrey, I see just how dire the situation is for others. There is, of course, much drought in the western United States as well, but it has thankfully not reached the point where our running water is cut from the house, or that it is almost impossible to find bottled water to purchase. However, it could reach this tipping point as it has for Monterrey if we do not do something about it, which we must not let happen. My yearly visits to visit my family, despite their intention being to have fun and socialize with relatives, have also impacted me deeply in the sense that I feel determined to plant my little seed in spreading awareness to others of the challenges braved by many people around the world, specifically in Mexico. These challenges are influenced greatly by climate change, which means that support to the people and initiative to reverse these effects are especially important. We’re all in this together!
“We are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”
-Barack Obama
Work Cited
“Mexico’s Drought: Country Faces a Water Emergency” – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Reflection
I really had to stop and think about what I was going to write about. After a while of feeling stumped, I realized that in my mind I had been limiting climate change to mostly things that had to do with the polar ice caps, or sudden storms, because that is kind of how I hear about climate change in school. Upon discovering that drought is indeed affected greatly by climate change, however, I immediately knew what to write about. Water, or lack thereof, is a big part of the lives of many people in certain parts of Mexico, where my origins lie and my whole family (except for my parents and brother, of course) live. I hate having to see them struggle and stress over the drops of a resource that to my friends and schoolmates back home, is so easy to waste. This is exactly why the topic of drought is such a big deal for me because it affects my culture and the people I love, making life harder for them. When I started researching this, I unearthed stories that made me see that the problem was much bigger than I had ever imagined, which made me want to write about it even more. I hope that people will see my writing and understand that taking care of the planet is so, so important because when we take care of the planet, we take care of ourselves and of each other. Even if where we are we are “just fine” and don’t see much struggle, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, and we should fight for a better world just as much as anyone. Spreading awareness is one of the best ways to make things happen because no one will really go above and beyond to do anything such as putting climate change solutions in action unless they feel motivated to.