“We want water!” chanted 120 children from Ramana’s Garden as they walked down the highway with hand drawn signs on Monday April 2nd.
Local villagers planned to rally with 200 people against the restrictions and high prices of drinking water. A written proposal was submitted and rejected April 1st, the villagers feared arrest and did not attend the rally.
“We said we would come, so we did.” Seven volunteers, eight teachers and all of Ramana’s School crowded the streets, demanding recognition and clean drinking water.
When we arrived at the roadblock, the agreed upon location for the rally and found no one, Maggie, the head volunteer at Ramana’s Garden, made the decision that we should fight alone for our water.
There is one water pump and filtration center in the area. We walked 3 kilometers down the highway, in the hot sun, to demand more water. Children as young as four ran along with signs reading, “please, we are thirsty,” “we need water to live,” and “feed our thirsty bodies.”
A rally compiled of over one hundred children had more strength than one million adults. When we arrived at the pump, Ramana’s children led one another in chants spoken both in Hindi and English, so all would understand their demands.
The head of water distribution was at the main office in Rishikesh, only workers heard our cry. We piled the children into tempos (three wheeled taxi’s) and planned to bring the rally into the city.
Maggie spoke with the main office on the telephone and was promised three hours of water each morning as well as each evening.
We returned to Ramana’s to await our daily ration of drinking water.
“Last year we would go five days without a single drop of water coming into the compound,” said Maggie. School was closed early each day so that children could go home to drink water. “If we don’t get this water than they will hear from us again.”
Three days before a shout was heard across Ramana’s. No water had flowed into the compound for three days and the gardens were beginning to die.
“Nar’s poisoned all the salads with shit water!” Dr. Prabhavati Dwabha screamed.
Nar, Ramana’s gardener, had decided to use the water that runs along the street on our organic greens.
“It’s no wonder our kids have pig worms!” Dwabha continued. “I can’t believe he has done this.” Pig worms are contracted by the consumption of food or water that has been exposed to the fesses of hogs. With animals roaming the streets, water flowing in open air, through garbage and filth is likely to be dangerous.
Krishna, 15, has a pig worm two inches long in the right frontal lobe of her brain. “It is amazing that she can even function with the high levels of sedatives that she is on,” Dwabha said at a volunteer meeting one month ago.
Without tranquilizers each evening Krishna goes into seizure. Her worms came from contaminated ice cream bought in the streets. Once the top of her class, Krishna will not live into adulthood. She dreams of becoming a teacher one day, but it is unlikely that she will live long enough wear her first sari as a married woman.
Clean water is something that is taken for granted in America. I used to complain about the flavor of water when visiting friends in various cities, but I never feared illness if I drank from an unknown faucet. Here, I buy water everyday. With 60 children living in, and 60 more coming for school each day, there just isn’t enough to go around.
Currently, we are raising donations for a solar powered water pump and filter. This will eliminate our dependency on public water that often does not flow. We are roughly 300 meters from the banks of the Ganges River; hopefully we will be able to drink this water in the future.
If you would like to make a donation, volunteer, or learn more about Ramana’s Garden please visit our website at www.sayyesnow.org .
Western State Writers Spring 2009 