EnviroGirl on Tap Water
Welcome, EnviroGirl, our Guest Blogger on Blog Action Day, and thank you for being our Guest Blogger!
Thanks, Intlxpatr, for inviting me to be your guest blogger.
Intlxpatr knows that I am passionate about drinking tap water, as well as encouraging others to do the same. I’ve almost always chosen to drink tap water over bottled water, primarily because it’s cheaper that bottled water, and it’s readily available (just turn on the faucet!).
Over the last year I’ve learned that there are even more reasons to drink tap water (at least in the U.S.). So I’ll quickly share with you a few reasons why you should save your money and drink tap water. If you want to do more research on the topic, I’ve included a few links below.
Why you should choose tap water over bottled…
1) Tap water is tested stringently for chemical and microbiological contaminants. It is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and must comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Bottled Water is often regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and does not fall under the Safe Drinking Water Act. (All water in the U.S. falls under the Safe Drinking Water Act.) This means that it is not tested as rigorously as tap water. In addition, your community water provider is required to send you a Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) every year. The CCR should inform you of the quality of your tap water and if any contaminants have been detected. Try finding this information on the label of a bottle of water.
2) Bottled water is not only more expensive to purchase, the environment costs are greater too. Bottled water must be shipped to your location, which means more fossil-fuel emissions into the air. After the water is consumed, the plastic bottle must be disposed of. If the bottle is not recycled, it will be tossed in a landfill where it will take about 700 years (plastic bottle recycling facts) to decompose.
3) Clean drinking water is a valuable resource. Recently, droughts and pressures from population growth have created water shortages. In communities experiencing water shortages, bottling water has become a hot topic because it depletes local drinking water supplies. Water use restrictions may be imposed on the community, while the bottled water company is still packaging and selling the amount of water it was permitted to use (For example – http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-bottledwater1307oct13,0,6642058.story). This also leads into the importance of conserving drinking water resources and implementing creative strategies such as water reuse (Info on water reuse – http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/recycling/index.html ).
Again, the information above regarding water quality is for tap water in the U.S. In countries that do not have adequate sanitation it is not advisable to drink tap water. If you live outside of the U.S., the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commission are two organizations that have water quality standards that many countries choose to adopt. You can search online to determine if your country follows any of these standards and if your tap water is safe to drink.
Links:
U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act:
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/sdwa/basicinformation.html
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Drinking Water:
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/
World Health Organization – Drinking Water:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/en/
European Commission – Drinking Water:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-drink/index_en.html
Website for Water in the Middle East:
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/env/water.htm
National Resource Defense Council – Bottled Water Q & A:
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp
Plastic bottle recycling facts (U.S.):
http://earth911.org/recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/
The List
“I need to put that on The List,” I think to myself when I discover I am on my last deodorant. Actually, I discover I have already finished the last deodorant, but I think maybe I have one in my travel stuff, and I am right. I also have deodorant in the Seattle stash and in the Pensacola stash, and I usually stop one of those places before going anywhere else, so I feel safe using the travel deodorant.
Once I find something I like, I usually stick to it, until they reformulate it or make it “new and improved” in some way that I hate. I remember that I bought the deodorant when we were going to Saudi Arabia – hmmm. . . . about 10 years ago! I had been there, and I knew they didn’t have this particular kind which goes on clear, isn’t sticky, and has no scent.
Guess I must have overbought (you think?) After reading EniGma’s blog on Expiration Dates I even checked to see if deodorant expires, but there is no expiration date.
It took us nearly 20 years to use up all the dental floss I bought before we went to Tunis. Somehow, I had estimated one roll of dental floss per month, times 24 months. We were still using that dental floss when the drug store that sold it to us went out of business!
I can get most things I need here in Kuwait, but deodorant goes on “The List,” which is things I need to buy when I go back to the US for a couple weeks. I checked yesterday, and could not find a scentless, clear non-gel. I have enough to get me through till my next drugstore expedition.
The List exists between trips, and drives a lot of our stateside behavior. It’s like our own personal scavenger hunt. It’s mostly make-up, underwear/socks, specific clothing (a caramel colored long sleeved T-shirt), cooking goods we can’t find here (Chinese ginger tea), etc.
Last trip, I found the last item on my list on the last day I was there – I had bought a cat groomer for our son several years ago, and his cat loves it. It is like a very long bottle brush made into a rainbow, and as the cat rubs on it, it brushed excess fur out. I never round the exact thing, but I found something like it.
The Qatteri Cat is utterly indifferent. He doesn’t care that I used my last inches of suitcase space for something special for him.
And, when I get back to Kuwait, as I am unpacking, sometimes I think to myself “I wonder why I thought I needed this?” I find that I have an entire drawer full of candles I don’t use, cocktail napkins I don’t use, and shelves of books I need to give away or donate to a local library.
The reverse is that while I am shopping here, I also have a list, mostly a mental list, trying to find unique gifts to take back to people in the US. I have found a few things here, but locally made gifts are getting harder and harder to find.
My list is getting shorter. Mostly now it is dental appointments, well woman, etc. Maybe a new caramel colored, long sleeved t-shirt, surely a stop at the Lancome counter, but the less the list, the more time to just relax and enjoy the trip.
“Something More Serious”
I remember clearly the first time I ever felt old.
I had discovered a Lancome product, Renergie, that I loved. I have always been good at trying to keep my face “moisturized,” and had graduated up to Lancome from good old Oil of Olay. We were living in Germany once more, our son was about eight years old, and I think they formulate Oil of Olay differently for different customer bases; the smell was different in Germany (and even more different in Qatar! I think it has a sort of cumin undertone!) but I had found this Renergie stuff that glided on and smelled good and wasn’t oily or sticky, so I liked it. It was expensive, but we had a little more money now and I felt it was a splurge.
My Renergie was running out; I needed a replacement. I happened to stop by the Lancome counter at a time when there was a Lancome representative there who asked what I needed. I told her I was looking for the Renergie that I loved.
Simple question, right?
The Lancome representive stops, and looks at me closely. There is this long, uncomfortable pause as she continues to look at me. I’m frankly annoyed.
“My dear,” she starts, “You need something more serious.”
Something more serious? I’m thirty-five years old! I have not yet got any wrinkles to speak of! My skin is in great shape!
All these thoughts rush into my head as the saleslady continues to look at me seriously, and to move toward some heavier creams, which I HATE. I’m still dealing with that one word – “serious.”
I need something “serious.”
It was so devastating to me that my reaction was almost physical revulsion. I think my legs went week and shakey. Looking back, I suspect that it is part of a sales pitch, a script devised to move the customer up the scale to more and more expensive products. I think I even sensed it then, but the truth is, when someone says something like that to you, it damages a vanity that you didn’t even know you had.
I don’t think I bought anything that day. I think I stumbled out of the store and went to pick up my son from his karate lesson and sneaked back at a time when there was no Lancome lady there and bought what I really wanted – the Renergie.
But the damage had been done. Now, when I put the cream on my face I was looking in the mirror for whatever the saleslady had seen that indicated I needed something more “serious.”
It wasn’t long before I humbled myself and went back and asked what the representative thought I really needed, and we agreed on the light form – the lotion – which also went on nicely and smelled good, because how it smells really matters to me. I don’t care how good it is; if it doesn’t smell good – to me – I can’t wear it.
She moved me up to Primordiale, which I wore for years until the next Lancome representative looked at me and said brightly “I bet you would love Absolue! It will get rid of those little crow’s feet in no time!”
We all have weak spots that we don’t even know we have. If you are a man and you have read this far, you will laugh in your superior way, thinking this is just a piece of fluff. To you I say wait until your son beats you in those family wrestling matches for the first time, beats you fairly. When our son would wrestle with his Dad, I would say “I hear the antlers clanging in the forest!” as they fought for who would be the king. To you I say that the sad day will come when you are no longer the biggest bull moose in the forest, and you, too, will have that sad, humbled feeling I got when I was told I needed something more “serious.”
The advertisers of this world know our weaknesses. I am willing to bet the Lancome ladies have a script they use, to press our buttons, to expose weaknesses we don’t even know we have. My husband brings home a Men’s Health occasionally – have you ever noticed, every one of them is the same? There are articles about making your abs flat, taking vitamins and reviving your sex life – in every issue! They know where we feel bad about ourselves before we even know it, and they are making a lot of money off of our inadequacies!
And no, my friends, I don’t have any answers. Even while I know that these things are the vain, inconsequential things of this world, even while I know that this is all passing vanity, even while I try to resist, I succumb. Sometimes the temptations is too great and my spirit is too weak to stand up to their insistence that I need something “more serious.” This blog entry is merely my meager attempt to fight back.
Ramadan Shopping: Breaking the Code
Finally, this morning, I was able to do some shopping. We are talking desperate, here, no eggs left in the house, no onions and we are getting low on milk.
I shopped on Thursday, the first day of Ramadan, with no problems. Since then, I have tried to shop Friday after church, and Saturday around two in the afternoon – both times, just the crunch in the parking lot convinced me not to even venture into the store. This was true both at the Sultan Center and at the co-op.
One friend told me that a good time is around 4 in the afternoon, but that is low energy time for me, and time when I need to be thinking about what kind of dinner I am going to get on the table. That’s not a real good time for me to be shopping. And it would also mean being on the road at a time when there seems to be a lot of traffic, which I avoid. I honor your fast, and at the same time, late in the day, your low blood sugar, sleep deprivation and caffein deprivation make you dangerous!
(once again I have given up bad language – this time as my Ramadan “fast”. If you will remember, I gave it up for Lent, and I’ve continued to do fairly well, but Ramadan is a good time to practice some additional spiritual discipline.)
But this morning, I had thought I would try eight in the morning, but there was a lot of traffic. I waited until nine, and it turned out to be a good time – the produce store was being re-stocked, there were eggs, there was milk, there was everything I needed. I wasn’t the only one there, there were a few other women, but it was a cake walk, relatively speaking. I’ve broken the code!
Cultures Collide
Maybe “culture clash” is too strong, maybe it’s more like huge continents that kind of bump into each other and send a reverberation through both continents, more a slow grinding than a crash? And maybe, like rough stones tumbling in a barrel, as we rub our rough edges against one another over time, maybe we become smooth, polished gems?
I have a dear friend, one of those friends that when you can grab some time together you never run out of topics, and when they leave, you remember “Oh! I forgot the point of that story was . . . and I never got to it!” or “Oh! she was starting to tell me about the . . .. and then we segued off into something else!” This friend delights my heart; when you see her face, you can see her lively soul in her sparkling eyes.
Those eyes were looking at me in utter puzzlement.
“What do you mean you couldn’t find any celery?” she asked. “Didn’t you go to the grocery store?”
“Yes! I spent hours there! Big mistake, shopping just before Ramadan, me and everyone else in the village.”
“So why didn’t you just buy some celery?” she persisted.
“There wasn’t any celery! It was all gone!” i responded.
“How could it be gone?” she asked, incredulity in her voice, “Don’t they always have celery?”
Something is wrong with this conversation. We look at each other.
“Have you ever been grocery shopping just before Ramadan?” I asked her.
“I never go grocery shopping!” she replied.
(Can you hear those continents grinding?)
I sat down. I looked at her. I believed her; I don’t think this woman is capable of lying, she is innocent and straight-forward.
“You’ve never been grocery shopping?” I asked her, knowing that if she said it, it is true, but trying to figure out how this could even be possible.
“Well, a couple times, like when I was making that pie, but only for a few little things, not like food to feed the family.”
She has staff. They’ve always had staff.
So I explained to her that just before Ramadan, like in western countries just before Christmas, some items just disappear.
“One time, in Tunisia, olive oil disappeared! And eggs! And even tomato sauce, and these are all products made in Tunisia!” I explained. “Here,” I went on, “you know how it is, sometimes even when it is not Ramadan, things will disappear, but when Ramadan is coming, if you know you might need something, you have to plan way in advance. Your Mom probably has taken care of all that. ”
“I don’t think so,” she said, two little tiny worry lines creasing her brow.
“Your Mom doesn’t shop, either?” I asked.
“Not for groceries.” And she’s looking at me like I am from another world.
And I am. This friend is so patient with me, with my little ignorances. When you are a stranger in a strange land, you expect some of the big differences. Like Ramadan, that is a big difference, when the whole country becomes more religious and for a whole month the focus is on God, on fasting during daylight and gathering with family and friends and feasting at night, reading the Qur’an, submitting your sins and begging forgiveness. . .
It’s the little things that catch you up. You kind of assume that everyone lives life a lot like you do, and it can be a real shock to discover that in small, everyday things you take for granted, you do things very differently.
Some of my earliest memories are in the kitchen, cutting dates and prunes to help my Mom make fruit cake. I can remember stirring chocolate pudding as it cooked on the stove, making jello, simple things before I graduated to chopping nuts and onions, etc. And I wrongly assumed this is everyone’s experience.
I know I have shocked my friend, too, sometimes. I asked what I thought was a very simple question once, and watched her face become a mask of horror at the very thought. God bless her for her patience with me!
I bless all my friends today, my Tunisian friends, my Kuwaiti friends, my Saudi friends, my German friends, my French friends, my Qatteri friends – all the friends who have endured my chauvinistic mistakes, assuming all the world thinks as I do. I bless my American friends, because even though we are from the same nation, we, too, are from different areas and different family cultures (tribes!) and we don’t see through the same eyes, our views are colored by the culture through which we observe the world. Today I am thankfully amazed that we manage to get along as well as we do!
Ramadan Supplies
Oh! It’s a perfect day to be out shopping. Stores are putting out all the special Ramadan things – and now is the time you can find all the things that have been missing all summer. It’s a lush, wealthy time, anticipating the joys of the coming month of Ramadan.
And look what I found! Straight from the Street of Lanterns?
No! Made in China!
The Street of Ramadan Lanterns
Over 15 years ago, this article appeared in the March/April edition of SaudiAramco World.
Blessed is He who made constellations in the skies and placed therein a lamp and a moon giving light; and it is He who made the night and day to follow each other: For such as have the will to celebrate His praises or to show their gratitude.
The Qu’ran, Chapter XXV (Al-Funqan, The Criterion), Verses 61-62
Written and photographed by John Feeney
No one knows for certain when the use of children’s Ramadan lanterns began, but it is a very old Egyptian tradition. Indeed, lanterns and lamps of various kinds, of many hues and degrees of brightness, and even both real and imaginary, have always been special to Egypt. For centuries before the coming of electricity, Cairo itself was noted for its spectacular use of lanterns to illuminate the city, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.
Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar year, is a time of fasting, blessings and prayers. It also commemorates the revelation of the first verses of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad.
As a way of giving thanks to God during this holy month, and as a way of unifying the worldwide community of believers, Muslims – with special exceptions for the sick, nursing mothers, pregnant women and travelers – spend the daylight hours fasting. The hours of the night, until dawn, are marked by prayers, ceremonial meals and celebration of the day’s spiritual victory over human desires. After sunset, streets and squares all over the Muslim world are thronged with people out buying food after the long day’s fast, or visiting friends, or preparing for sahur, the last meal of the night, which will be taken before dawn. It is then that young Cairenes, allowed to stay up late because of Ramadan, traditionally gather in groups of three or four to go out among the crowds, swinging their glowing lanterns and chanting their ancient song of Ramadan – just as children in other lands go caroling – hoping to receive in return a few nuts or sweets for their vocal efforts.
Passed on by children from generation to generation, the traditional song, in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, accompanies the swinging of the lanterns in the little ones’ hands. It goes like this:
Wahawi, ya wahawi
iyyahah
You have gone, O Sha’ban,
You have come, O Ramadan,
iyyahah
The daughter of the Sultan
is wearing her caftan,
iyyahah
For God the forgiver
Give us this season’s gift.
Some believe that the children’s lantern song comes all the way from Pharaonic times, like the ancient Egyptian song called O-Faleh in the Pharaonic tongue and al-Bahr Sa’id in Arabic (meaning “The River Has Risen”). In the days before the Aswan Dam was built, that song was sung by groups out in small boats on the night the Nile reached the peak of its annual flood. Certainly, the lantern song is very old, and very Egyptian.
The opening lines – “Wahawi ya, wahawi iyyahah” – have no known meaning. “You have gone, O Sha’ban” refers to the month that comes before Ramadan in the Muslims’ lunar hijri calendar, and “the daughter of the Sultan is wearing her caftan” means she is dressed in the garment worn when going out, maybe to the mosque. “Give us this season’s gift” refers to the small presents children receive from family and friends at the time of the ‘Id or holiday that follows the month of fasting.
In the days leading up to Ramadan, children become more insistent about having a lantern; many can hardly wait to start swinging and singing – for what child, from its earliest years, is not attracted by a glowing, magical lantern? Yet Cairo children may be the most “lantern-struck” of all: Recent research by Dr. Marsin Mahdi of Harvard University indicates that Scheherezade’s ‘Alaa’ al-Din (Aladdin) of the magic lamp may well have been a Cairo boy.
One week before Ramadan begins, part of Ahmad Maher Street, for most of the year a humble thoroughfare in the old medieval quarter of Cairo, is transformed. Usually home to tinsmiths, marble-cutters and makers of mousetraps, for one glorious month it becomes “The Street of the Lanterns.”
Filmmaker John Feeney, who has lived in Cairo for a quarter century, is a long-time contributor toAramco World. He wishes to thank Laila Ibrahim, renowned authority on Mamluk Egypt, for her help with this article.
This article appeared on pages 14-23 of the March/April 1992 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.
You can read the rest of this fascinating article HERE.
I love the Ramadan lanterns. I’ve been to Cairo, and found the heat and the teeming population, the gridlocked traffic and all the begging a little scary. But I would go back in a heartbeat to see this street of lanterns!
For my non-Muslim readers, I found a wonderful site while researching Ramadan lanterns that gives a simple overview of Ramadan: Hamad El Afandi’s Ramadan Kareem. It is heavily illustrated with photos.
Where are Hussein and Ali?
Ten days ago I was taking a new friend around the old souks and I showed her Hussein and Ali, on the corner across from the main entrance to the Heritage Souk area, where a lot of expats buy carpets.
One week later, downtown with Adventure Man – Hussein and Ali’s shop is gone. The sign is down, the shutters are closed and it looks like they are never coming back.
Have they moved? Does anyone know what happened? Did they lose their lease?
I Thought I’d Never See You Again
I thought I saw you from across the room. My heart leapt into my throat – I didn’t dare believe my eyes.
I thought I would never see you again. When you disappeared from my life, life lost a little of it’s savor. I looked for you, I searched for you, always disappointed. I had become so addicted, without even knowing it. You made such a difference in my life. Without you, there is only darkness.
I woke up each morning yearning for you, and sad because of your absence. Oh yes, I moved on, I found others, but I was never satisfied. I never found a substitute for you.
So you understand why I appeared so wild-eyed with happiness? Why I grabbed at you so greedily? I want you in my life! Please, don’t desert me again!
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