I'm following Virusmanbob's advice about posting my story about water :-). It is a story from my summer in Ecuador, before coming to college.

Tchau,
Palani

As I extended my arm to pass what seemed like the 300th bucket of water to the young Ecuadorian man standing to my left and slightly uphill, my hand jerked a little as my tired muscles contracted, causing the precious contents to slosh about and spill over the lip of the bucket. A small amount splashed about his feet and ran a ways down the hill before being absorbed by the dirt. "Perdóname," I whispered apologetically as I reached to grab the next bucket of water. Eventually these buckets would reach the end of the chain of people where they would be emptied and each used to sustain a small sapling that had been planted that morning.

I caught an empty bucket coming the opposite direction and tossed it on, sending it towards the river where it was to be refilled and begin its journey back upslope. To my left and right stretched a long line of people, which curved over the contours of the canyon wall to distant endpoints, one by the river and one upslope. All the people were members of the host community I was living in, and I had gotten to know many of them over the past 4 weeks.

Here we are! Long line of people :)

Moving water was hard work and I couldn't imagine doing the job alone. I was tired just passing the buckets, standing in one place. It took the hundred or so people in the community all afternoon to sufficiently water the 300 saplings we had planted. That which flowed so easily downhill required great effort to bring back up again. Somehow the trees we had planted were supposed to benefit our community, although my Spanish wasn't good enough to ascertain why the newly-planted saplings on the slope above the river would help our community's irrigation system, miles downstream.

That day, I was reminded of what someone from the community had told me: that less than 50 years ago, before the irrigation channels ran through the community, people would make the mile-plus trek to the river to carry buckets of water back to where they lived. It was something they needed to do in order to get water, and was a task they did year after year so they could water their crops and cook their food. Something we so often take for granted in the US, water is a vital resource that exists in some areas in large amounts, and in scarce amounts in others. Before modern day pipes and plumbing, fresh water was not so easily attained. This I was reminded of during the hours spent with my host community, passing buckets of water along a human chain.