Water Story

So I have been very behind on the blog postings. I had trouble logging on etc. Despite being an engineer, I am very technically challenged. I didn't even have a twitter before this course started.

I remember seeing some postings about our water story on here. I wanted to share mine. This is actually one of the most interesting prompts I have written on in a while. It was open ended and I was able to reflect on a great experience I had. Hope you enjoy

-Enrique Garcia


Water can be a unifying force and the source of opportunities for humans to collaborate on an unheard of scale. I got a chance to experience this while touring the Itaipu Dam on the Brazilian-Uruguay border. Although we learned about the technical aspects of how the dam converts water flow into electric current, I noticed a sense of collaboration between two nations that I had never heard of before. Given it's location, both governments agreed to divide both benefits and liabilities 50/50. There was visible passion and pride in the technical accomplishments that this dam represented to the people of both countries as demonstrated by the enthusiastic tour guide, who at every turn, had a story to tell about the process leading up the completion of this project. In a world where we distinguish ourselves through borders and feuds are more common than collaboration, this dam is an example of two nations working together for the collective progress of its citizens. At the entrance of this dam, there was a wall listing the nationalities of all it's visitors which included all the countries you could ever think of. At Itaipu, water was a demonstration to the world that human collaboration is both possible and sustainable.