One of the parts of Chile I did not get used to was the lack of drinking water readily available. There were always bottles to be bought, but while in the US there is free water as the default in any restaurant you visit, this was not the case in Chile. There were a few places where you could ask for tap water and they would bring you a glass, but in general water was only to be bought by the bottle. While this may seem like a small thing, it was different to think of water as a luxury.
The first day I got to Chile, it rained. It rained hard. I wad surprised to hear that this was not common, that Chile had been in a drought for over a decade, and it has been a big problem for the people. It is estimated that as of the end of 2021, of Chile’s population of 19 million, over half lived in areas with “severe water scarcity”, meaning that they did not have enough water for the lives of the people. A water rationing plan has even been announces as a way to ensure access of water to the people of Chile, but this is far from a solution. One of the most basic needs to sustain life, the lack of water an emergency for the people and the land.
I was in the car with my host mom one evening and we drove past a river. She told be that the water used to be much higher, and that now, as we could see from the road, it is almost all dried up. Being in this sort of environment made me think about water in a way that I had never done before, making me both very grateful for the easy public access to water that I have had in the US, and also very worried that this is the state of some parts of the world.