New World Water

Mos Def - New World Water
"Americans be wasting it on some leasure s***, other nations be desperately seeking it."

Returning to Honduras has led me to realize how fortunate I have been my entire life. I've lived most of my life in a place where you can drink water right out of the faucet, while most people in Honduras barely have access to water that can kill you.

When I lived in El Porvenir (Cortes), we only got water for an hour each day and we were supposed to gather it in a "pila" and tank and use that for the rest of the day. Think that's bad? Well some people up the hill only got it for an hour each WEEK! It gets worse; sometimes you don't even get ANY water. Can it get any worse? Yes, of course it can; this is Honduras, the second poorest country in the Americas. When I lived in Tela, we got water all day, but it turned brown and smelled like crap for days, even if it only rained overnight. I never even drank the tap water in L.A., that will be one of the first things I do when I get back. Maybe...

I've become ridiculously paranoid about the water here, actually, I've always been paranoid about water. I've gotten a lot of comparisons to fictional characters like Larry David and Monk. Here are some examples of my paranoia: I hold my breath most of the time during showers out of fear that I may accidentally drink some of the water, I used to brush my teeth with drinking water, I don't wash produce with tap water, I make sure drinking glasses are completely dry before pouring a drink into it, I sometimes rinse dishes with purified water even if they are clean and dry, I give my dog purified water to drink, I can go on, but I wont as to avoid ridicule.

Additional quotes from Mos Def's song, New World Water:

"It used to be free, but now it cost you a fee because it's all about getting that cash mo-ney"

"There are places where TB is as common as T.V. cause foreign based countries go and get greedy. The type of cats who pollute the whole shoreline so they can purify it and sell it for a dollar twenty five."