Water, water everywhere ...

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of my earliest poetic memories. It was probably the first epic poem that I read. I loved the way poetry could be used to tell a story. The poem used vivid imagery to open a reader to an ocean voyage fraught with horror but it was idea of being becalmed at sea without drinking water that stuck in my young mind;

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot – Oh Christ!
That ever this should be.
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs,
Upon the slimy sea. 

Coleridge's poem was written in 1834.  During the 19th century, cholera spread across the world from its original reservoir in the Ganges delta in India. Six subsequent pandemics killed millions of people across all continents. The current (seventh) pandemic started in South Asia in 1961 and reached Africa in 1971 and the Americas in 1991. Cholera is now endemic in many countries. In Yemen - cholera is pandemic. 

The cholera outbreak in Yemen has become the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history, with a million cases expected by the end of the year and at least 600,000 children likely to be affected. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported more than 815,000 suspected cases of the disease in Yemen and 2,156 deaths. About 4,000 suspected cases are being reported daily, more than half of which are among children under 18. Children under five account for a quarter of all cases.

• Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated.
• Severe cases need rapid treatment with intravenous fluids and antibiotics.
• Provision of safe water and sanitation is critical to control the transmission of cholera and other waterborne diseases.
• Cholera is an easily treatable disease. The majority of people can be treated successfully through prompt administration of oral rehydration solution (ORS). The WHO/UNICEF ORS standard sachet is dissolved in 1 litre (L) of clean water. Adult patients may require up to 6 L of ORS to treat moderate dehydration on the first day.

The crisis in Yemen is completely man made. More than two years of fighting between the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels has crippled the country, causing widespread internal displacement, the collapse of the public health system, and leaving millions on the brink of famine. The situation worsened when public health workers, whose salaries had gone unpaid, went on strike. Rubbish, left on the street washed into the water supply.

Over 19 million Yemenis no longer have access to clean water. Without rehydration through salts and clean water, the disease spreads like wildfire. The Yemeni government stopped funding the public health department in 2016: many doctors and hospital staff have not been paid for more than a year. Healthcare has since been provided mainly by international groups. Their progress has been hampered by conflict.

The most of the children of Yemen do not celebrate Christmas. Many of them may not live until the end of the year. Who cares? WHO cares – there is a continual appeal for aid to provide ORS packs and to pipe in clean water supply. When you consider buying that extra gift this year, consider helping Save the Children to provide a ceramic water filter for a family and help stop the spread of this virulent disease. https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/how-you-can-help/emergencies/yemen-crisis

Here in the West, we believe that fresh, clean water is our human right. When our local water supply became infected with cryptosporidium, we were able to buy clean, bottled water. Eventually we were compensated. In Yemen over one million people will be infected by cholera by the end of 2017.  Many will die. Death from cholera is preventable.

Water 

Yemen lies awash
with parasitic conflict:
Open the floodgates.


Thanks for reading. Please pass this on to your friends and family. Adele 

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An idiot abroad - Keep an open mind.

I have travelled abroad since I was 8 years old.  First trip was only to Belgium with family - we flew to Ostend and had a great time at The White Horse Inn. I has drawn money from my Post Office savings account and bought a traditional Netherlands costume and a costume doll.  I loved the exotic, the new languages, learning to sing and dance to the Flemish Farmer's Dance.  Dad bought me the record. I still remember the some of the words. That was the start of my romance with the world beyond home. I fell in love with new countries, new languages and different cultures.

I have rarely been to the same place twice, ( and not just to avoid the need to apologise for my first visit). I have just always believed that life is too short not to explore and enjoy as much of the world as I can.  I travelled in mostly in Europe until I was 15.  In 1969 I went on a dancing tour to Switzerland as one of a team of  twelve British under 12's. My passport was stamped in France, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein en route.  I still have it.  I went to Lisbon when Portugal was still under military rule, to Yugoslavia when it was still a communist country, to Italy, to Morocco, (where my Dad tried to exchange me for two camels and a rug) and to Majorca, when there was only one hotel in Palma Nova, and very few people spoke English.

For me, travelling overseas means having a complete change from the British way of life. When abroad, I 'do as the Romans do': I eat foreign food, try to communicate in the appropriate language and I get off the beaten track to see how people really live in other counties. I have never believed that everyone in the world should learn to speak English. I love the sound of new words, the challenge of communicating with people who are different from me and seeing their faces light up with delight that at least I am trying to understand them. 

It is challenging and rewarding. It needs preparation and sometimes detailed planning but my goodness, it has been worth it. In 2005, I went with my husband and children to Turkey on a water-sports holiday and it was great fun but mid-may through I decided that we should get away from the coast and see something of  the country and culture. We booked a two day trip into the hills, found ourselves at Ephesus and there I experienced an encounter with the single remaining column of The Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  On the drive back, we saw the ramshackle home of a widow, who would not survive if villagers did not give her food.

In 2000, recently divorced, I took my children to South Africa and experienced the extremes of vast wealth and real poverty. In 2002 we cruised the Nile to satisfy my own life long fascination with ancient Egypt. While staying in Luxor, we were followed down the road by a man in a horse-drawn buggy who wanted us to go to a market. I wasn't there to shop, so to avoid him, I led the children to the opposite side of the street.  Suddenly, there was a dreadful smell.  I smelt it long before I saw the poor devil coming towards us whose 'galabia' was completely saturated with excrement. None of the locals seemed to notice him. It was just one of many life-changing experiences that have filled me with a love for my homeland and compassion for others.

I am very grateful that by some quirk of fate, I was born in Britain, during a time of sustained peace, into a loving and generous family, in a time of plenty. We are so lucky. My Dad always said, "We have the best climate in the world but the worse bloody weather." My travels have taught me that we have so much more.

We have fresh, drinkable water and enough to bathe in, even enough to waste. We have plentiful food.  Our British produce is wonderful and we have the pick of the best from the rest of the world. We have the best healthcare system on the planet.  So why are we so unhappy? Why do we drink too much alcohol and damage our own health through over-eating and lack of physical activity. Oh, the idiots are not abroad.  They are right here.

My advice to anyone who is dissatisfied with our green and pleasant land, is to go and see how the other half of the world have to live.  Don't go to the Costas, demanding full English breakfast and football on big screen TV's. Go and see some of the real world. Then tell me that you don't have enough, that you are being short-changed by having to pay National Insurance and tax out of your pay. If you are unhappy with the NHS, take up your bed and walk in another person's shoes, where cholera infects the only source of water, where there are no antibiotics and no hope of recovery from most major illnesses. 

Once you have seen how much less green things are on the other side of some fences, then you will appreciate the desire of the down-trodden, the hungry and the war weary to come to our better way of life. I promise you, that no matter what you may believe, our lives are better than most.  This really is the greatest country on earth.

Be Happy

Be grateful you can turn a tap and pour yourself a drink:
In Africa they walk miles for fresh water, you barely have to blink.
Be grateful, there hasn't been real hardship here since 1945:
In Yemen, every day, starving people struggle to survive.
Be mindful that we have a democratic right to choose:
In other nations, all they have is lose, lose, lose.
Be generous, we have so much, we throw so much away.
Please give to the unfortunate who fall along life's way.
Be British and be happy, benevolent and true.
And trust me when I say that life is good for me and you.

Thanks for reading. Adele

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