Letters from the #e4k_water International Day of Action for Rivers #RiversUniteUs
The Wilderness, is something each and every one of us have within us and experience it in different ways.
Dr Ian Player through out his life has repeatedly makes reference to the importance of experiencing ones Wilderness and being able to feed ones soul in the great outdoors.
Looking at the letters I have been receiving from various students over the past few days as we come back into a civilized world after a weekend in the wilderness of Beaverlac, I truly believe that many of the students souls were enriched purely by being in the great outdoors.
Some letters have told me that “they have never slept in a tent”, others that they braved it and some slept under the stars for the first time in their life, others had never packed a fire or made a braai….. Though the most significant email I received was that some of the students had never been close to so much water before in their life, that they had never been by a flowing river and that they now for the first time understood the #JourneyOfWater on a more personal level……
So I am by no means saying “Well Done” to the team or “Your Job is Done”….. No instead I am saying well done your Job has started. The challenge is for every person that attended the weekend to become an ambassador for water! To go and make a positive change and to tell others of this personal and beautiful experience they have had with our life line….. WATER!
Below this I have inserted a letter I received from one of the students…… Accepting the Challenge.
Water warrior’s camp –my experience Camp site-Beaverlac camp site (14-16 March 2014)
“My name is Olwethu Sobantwana a 3rd year student studying Sport management in Cput student but most importantly I am a south African citizen and therefore it is my responsibility to protect this country from harm however during this camp I learnt something more important, I learnt that nature is meant to be admired and not fidgeted with.
I learnt of things like river channelling, building walls in the rivers to channel the water in a different direction, putting chemicals in the water can never be good for the living organisms in the water and therefore, the camp truly opened not only my eyes to how destructive humans are but also educated me on how I can play my part in protecting these natural resources for my grandchildren. Water is a nessicity for the existence of life and rivers, gorges and even seas have their own natural way of purifying themselves and there is no need for us to worry ourselves about purifying them because the chemicals and pipes we put in them is dangerous for the life in them like fish, plants, insects leaving in them, all we should do is to keep them clean and tidy the way they were before we even existed.
Changing the route of the rivers can lead to many hazardous disasters such as flooding because you do not know whether the place you channelling the water is capable to withstand the force and magnitude of the water you are bringing, the living organisms in that particular river might not survive in the foreign river and could be threatened by the species of that river.
John took time to educate us about the different life in the river we were around and that demonstration really moved me because we are destroying our environment and when we get natural disasters we all do not know what to do, it then became clear to me that if we do not start taking care of this environment then it might deal with us in a manner that will not favour us, things like hydrostatic electricity sound all good and well in paper however are they really good for our environment, are they good for the rivers, fish and the other organisms living in them?
Let us start conserving our resources you can join me and my buddies in the fight to protect our water and natural resources by liking Explore4knowledge page on face book or visit www.explor4knowledge.com
I vow to educate as many people as I can about the state our rivers are in but most importantly I will be more responsible for our natural resources…nature is perfect as it is let us stop trying to fix it.”
