5 Litres a Day - Water Challenge Day 3 and Day 4

Halfway through my 5 litres per day water challenge!


Day three was quite hard as I did not stay at my home on that night, meaning I didn't have access to the resources that I was using.

I didn't have resources such as my bucket to wash my clothes in (or enough time to get them dried before I went back home the next day), or to wash my body with  - so I decided that I would add the 2.5 litres that I would have otherwise used on Wednesday onto Thursday.


Instead of showering on Wednesday, I used a flannel, soap and some of my *very* limited water to clean my body this way. It didn't take up much water and it was a trick I used in India quite a lot when I didn't have time to shower. My hair was okay as I cleaned it on day two. The point of this blog and the challenge was to show exactly how hard it is to live on a very limited amount of water, so although it may seem not very clean at all - even having a flannel and clean water to wash myself down with it is a lot more than thousands of others have.

Using resources available to me

I only had one 1 litre bottle with me which I used for drinking water. As a result of this I had to guess how much water I was using for cooking and hygiene, which wasn't too hard since I had days one and two to judge by. Although I was using water from the tap instead of from my bottles, I was more conscious of how much water was running through the tap because of living out of bottles and having very little water to use.

I relied on using hand sanitiser a lot on day three so that I wouldn't use more water than my limit.


Day four, despite the added 2.5 litres from day three on top of my 5 litres, was actually the hardest day that I endured. This was because I had two lots of clothes to hand wash, and my hair and body to wash. I completely messed up the pattern that I created for myself to be able to *comfortably* live on 5 litres of water per day.

 Washing my body and hair with 3 litres of water wasn't incredibly hard as I had done both separately with 1.5 litres on day one and day two. Due to volunteering in India, and showering out of a bucket for three months, I have gotten quite used to washing myself using only the amount of water that is needed and not more.

hand washing clothes

The most challenging part of day four was washing two days worth of clothes with only 2 litres of water. This was hard, firstly because of the type of clothes I wore which were the type of material which hold a lot of water, and because there was more items to wash.

I used 1 litre to cover the clothes and make sure that they were wet, and then I put in the detergent and let the clothes sit for about 15 minutes. I then used the method that I learned in India to make sure that all the dirt was coming out of my clothes. I then used the other litre to wash the soap out of each piece of clothing separately. Using two litres of water to wash my clothes was incredibly difficult as I was used to using about 10 - 12 litres in India to do the same job. I used some of my "hygiene" water to finish washing my clothes.

The same as with washing my hair, my body, even my dishes - using too much product (in this case detergent) to wash items with will mean that you have to use more water to wash the product out, so I had to be really careful not to use too much detergent to wash my clothes with.

The amount of water I had for drinking and cooking was the same as previous days - enough to get by comfortably.

Here are some tips that I learned on day three and day four:


- If you ever decide to start hand washing clothes, make sure that you wash your clothes everyday so that your clothes do not build up and so that you don't use more water than needed.

- Use a flannel and soap if you don't have time for a shower or if you're not "dirty enough" to have a shower - and remember to have short 5 minute showers to save water!

5 Litres a Day - Water Challenge Day 2

So, I didn't keep quite on track of writing about my 5 Litres a Day water challenge as I would have liked.

Water to wash hair with

People may recall from the post that I wrote for day one, that there was absolutely no way that I could make 1.5 litres of water stretch to wash my body AND hair, so I decided that I would take it in turns and wash my hair one day, shower the next.

So, on day two, I washed my hair by putting my allocated 1.5 litres into my bucket and bending my head over the bath. As you can imagine - this really isn't a very comfortable way to wash your hair at all, especially without the use of a showerhead. It was even easier to shower and wash my hair when I used a bucket and scoop in India because I had way more water to work with.



I had to use 1.5 litres of water to wet my hair, wash it and then condition it so it was a pretty hard task as the more shampoo and conditioner you put onto your hair - the more water it is going to take to get it out. Regardless of this, I managed to complete the task without using anymore water than I had to, and my hair felt better than it had done in months! It felt really smooth and in better condition that when I usually shower and use more water and product.

Personal Hygiene

I did not manage to take many photos mainly just because I forgot - but I also washed my clothes that I'd been wearing that day in 1 litre of water and had no trouble with the amount of water I had to use for drinking and cooking with.

I did manage to be a bit more resourceful with the amount that I used for hygiene after learning from day one (details in Day One post), and ended up having around 100ml left at the end of the day. This might not seem like very much, but it felt like an achievement for me.






Although I haven't went into as much detail for Day Two, here are some tips that I have thought of to use less water when washing your hair:

www.wateruseitwisely.com

- Use less product. It is common sense to not use too much product as it can make your hair oily, but you also then use more water than what is actually needed. So, only use as much product as your hair needs.

- Use a two in one product so that you can use less water due to not having to wash the shampoo out and then apply the conditioner.

- Don't wash your hair everyday unless it's needed. On days that I do not need to wash hair, my showers can last under 4 minutes.

- Turn off the shower head whilst washing your hair, especially if you tend to leave your shampoo/conditioner on for a few minutes.



My posts for the remaining days shall be coming soon - I apologise for not writing them alongside doing the actual challenge.

www.wateruseitwisely.com

5 Litres a Day - Water Challenge Day One

As people may have already seen on my social media, I am doing a challenge that I set myself where I live on 5 litres if water per day for 5 days. This is a variation of the 'Live Below the Line'* challenge that I did as part of my fundraising for my trip to India.

The main aim of the challenge is to not use more than 5 litres of water per day. This means that I have 5 litres of water per day for things such as drinking, cooking, showering, clothes washing and for personal hygiene. I was inspired to do this challenge because once I arrived back into the UK, I realised just how much water I used compared to the amount I used in India, and the bad effects that it had.

My 5 litres of water put into bottles

Whilst living in my host home in Kotri, I used around 30 litres per day to drink, wash, shower with etc. It is said that a person needs a minimum of 20 litres per day to survive.* I decided to challenge myself and live on a quarter of this figure to highlight just how hard it is to live with a scarcity of water.  I put my 5 litres of water into bottles with labels on to help me to keep track of how much water I used for each need and to make sure that I used my water most effectively.


Day one was actually a lot easier for me than I thought it would be - but I do think this is because I got used to not using an abundance of water for three months and it became normality for me. However, not being able to turn a tap and have water flow freely from it was quite difficult. We are extremely lucky in the UK to be able to turn a tap and to have seemingly unlimited water at our expense. Using water from a bottle, on the other hand, for things such as washing my hands and face, was hard because I felt like I was wasting unnecessary water.

Water used for hygiene

After washing my hands, face and brushing my teeth, I had used 500ml from my allocated 1 litre for the day. This worried me a little as I had only 500ml left to wash my hands several times throughout the day, and to wash my hand and brush my teeth at the end of the day. Luckily for me, I managed to do it with the help of having adequate resources available in terms of sanitation, unlike approximately 1/3 of the world's population.* By the end of the day, I had just enough water to wash my face (without soap) and brush my teeth.

I didn't have enough water to have my "before bed" cup of tea though, which was mildly displeasing.

1.5 litres of water to shower with

Showering was quite hard as I had only 1.5 litres of water to clean myself with - body and hair. As it shows in the photo, the amount of water barely even covered my foot. I realised that there was no way in hell that I could wash my body and my hair with such a little amount, so stuck to washing my body and decided that I would have to take days in turn, one day shower, one day wash my hair.

Bucket showering is the main way to shower in India, and I was extremely lucky there to be able to use around 6 litres of water to shower with meaning that I could wash my body and hair without having to strategically plan it out. Living in the UK, I have several choices on how to wash myself - and all of them include as much water as I want to use and for however long. An 8 minute shower in the UK uses approximately 62 litres of water.*

Despite the extremely limited amount of water, I felt considerably cleaner using the 1.5 litres as using a bucket, and being conscious of the water usage makes me pay more attention to making sure that all of me is clean. (As well as knowing that I could wash my hair the next day).

I successfully managed to shower, wash my clothes, keep up my personal hygiene and drink and cook with my 5 litres a day, although I had no water left at the end of the day.

Here is a few tips that I have thought of for people to use less water:

- Always turn faucets off when not using water. Leaving the water running when brushing your teeth, washing your face, even washing your hands, is a waste of water. I used 1 litre to keep up good personal hygiene for 24 hours by not leaving taps on or using any more water than what was needed.

- When water is running, don't run it too fast. The faster the water comes out the tap, the more is wasted, and it will probably splash everywhere and that's not fun.

- When showering, try to shower for only as long as needed. I tend to do "5 minute" showers - listen to a song 5 minutes long and get out the shower when the song has ended.

- Don't use excessive amounts of product to wash with. The more product you use, the more water is used to wash it off.


I will post more each day of my experiences of my #5Litresaday challenge.

* https://www.livebelowtheline.com.au/
* http://everylittledrop.com.au/knowledge-center/how-much-water-does-a-person-need/* http://www.wateraid.org/what-we-do/the-crisis/statistics
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15836433

The Journey of a Bottle: How to make a Vertical Garden in Rajasthan, India

During my time in Rajasthan, India, I was using a fancy, overly-priced filtered water bottle that I bought prior to my travels (which was a complete waste of my money, by the way). Due to using the same bottle everyday, I never realised how many bottles of water were bought, drank, and then thrown away or burned after just one use. I spent a good month in India being completely oblivious to the fact that the bottles used to distribute clean drinking water were also non-reusable and advised buyers to chuck away these bottles after use!

Whilst in the city of Jodhpur, where our Mid Phase Review* was hosted, the hotel that we stayed in gave all 24 volunteers a 1 litre bottle of drinking water at every meal. That was 62 bottles per day for the 3 days that we were there. 186 bottles. This doesn't include the extra bottles that we requested. So lets say, in the 3 days that we were there, we effectively used 200 non-reusable bottles when we all had water bottles of our own.

Some bottles collected from hotel in Jodhpur

On the morning of leaving the hotel in Jodhpur I asked my Project Coordinator what happens to all the bottles once they have been used. She told me that they will probably either be chucked away or burned. Naturally, this worried me as we had used A LOT of plastic bottles, so I decided to round up all the bottles that hadn't already been taken away, and with help from the other volunteers, we successfully carried around 100 bottles back to Kotri, a 300km haul.

Me and another volunteer were focusing on the environment and how to effectively reuse materials that would otherwise be burned and cause more harm than good. We decided to make a Vertical Garden where both flowers and food could grow.



How to make a Vertical Garden in Kotri, Rajasthan:

Step 1) Save a lot of plastic bottles from being thrown away or burned.

Step 2) Ask questions. Where do we get seeds from? Where do we get soil from? There is a drought, will this even work? Can we get all the resources we need locally? Will anyone turn up to the sessions?!

Step 3) Fertilise some soil. Hurry, a Manthan mentor, helped us to dig up some unfertilised soil, and taught us how to effectively fertilise it using cow dung. One of the most liberating things I did in India was get my hands deep into some cow faeces!

Hurry, Harry, Hannah and Tamlal Ji fertilising soil; Indian style!

Step 4) Find some seeds! Ask people to help you. Find local resources and find the demand. For example, we planted chili seeds.

Step 5) Find some youth to join in the sessions. This was the tricky part. We held a few different sessions but the youth did not turn up to any!

Step 6) Don't give up.

Step 7) Make the session more fun. Include painting and music!

Hannah and youth girls painting bottles

 Step 8) With your newly found group of environmentalists, start cutting and painting the bottles, plant the seeds, hang the bottles from the biggest tree in the village and show off their great work!

Some Vertical Gardens hanging from tree in Kotri

The purpose of doing the Vertical Garden session was to teach the youth of Kotri to take care of their environment and that anything can be reused to make something. We painted the bottles to make them look more appealing and planted seeds that the village depend on. Part of the youth group we set up was to help the villagers to understand that the more active they are in their community, the better. We asked them to instead of burning or disposing of bottles, to make some Vertical Gardens of their own.

Tamlal Ji, Hannah and Harry

Tips:
- If you like to carry a water bottle around with you, invest in a durable one rather than buying a new one everyday
- reuse bottles by either becoming creative or reusing them to drink water out of
- drink tap water instead of buying bottled water everyday
- encourage your friends to do the same
- love your environment


Mid Phase Review* - 3 days out of our villages to relax, reflect and review our work progress to that date and to make action plans.

The Alpha-Goat of Kotri

The Alpha-Goat of Kotri

In the village of Kotri there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of goats. Herds of goats walk the streets of the village like gangs, asserting an almost arrogant dominance of the place. Some have found themselves accommodation and co-exist happily with their human families. Some live in pens, all goats together, and some, like the Alpha-Goat of Kotri, have chosen to live the unconventional life on the hard-knock streets that they roam.

Volunteer Hannah with Goaty - a goat belonging to a host family.

Goats. They cause so much traffic in the small village of Kotri. Pedestrians have to stop in their paths. Vehicles of all kinds come to a stand-still. This plethora of species and objects, with the added haphazard journeys of the dogs, cows and buffalos, create a chaotic new language that is indecipherable to the human ear. The only way to avoid this rush is to side step through the litter and faeces at the side of the road. Goats. They really do have run of the place.

Before having my first real experience of co-existing in the same space as goats, I thought they were all the same. How terribly wrong I was. Apart from their difference in rearing, their primitive behaviour and aesthetics, I thought they were all the same. How terribly wrong I was.  This was my mind-set until I met the one, the only, the Alpha-Goat of Kotri.

I met the Alpha-Goat of Kotri one day whilst waiting for the bus to Kishangarh with my fellow volunteers, Harry and Noel. Under an elderly tree which was crippled and entwined fiercely by old age, there he was, looking mundane and no different to any other goat, laying in the shade that the tree provided.

The Alpha-Goat of Kotri at night, near the shop.

The attention that I spent on him was fleeting, a mere acknowledgement of his existence. As I chatted away to my friends, the Alpha-Goat decided to assert his clear authority and dominance over the village – a memo that the ICS PRAVAH volunteers evidently hadn’t received. Slowly, he sauntered into our vision, into the middle of the road. My initial reaction was to think ‘I wonder what that goat is doing by himself’ as goats never seem to travel alone in the village of Kotri, and it was a strange sight to see. This was the first sign that I had overlooked which gave a hint into how much power he really possessed. Unhurriedly, he walked up to a herd of five cows and bleated at them with such force and control that these huge, heavy hunks of animals scarpered. They trotted gradually from the side of the road that they had been occupying. I was amazed. I had watched this seemingly more than ordinary goat overpower five animals that could have easily flicked him away with a swift movement from their tails.

What the newly coined ‘Alpha-Goat of Kotri’ did next was so shocking that I could not help but laugh out in surprise. The Alpha-Goat leisurely turned his head to look at his spectators, made eye contact with me and my counterparts, and then let release a steady stream of urine that seemed to take forever to stop. Once he was done, he strutted back to his resting place, victorious in his aims, and went back to sleep.

From that day on, and every day since, I have acknowledged the lone goat with the true respect that he deserves. He resides next to the local shop most days, watching the comings and goings of the people in his village. He is the undeniable leader of the community, trumping even the political power of the Sarpanch. The hierarchy of the village changed that day and with my vision now unclouded, I saw that in the boundaries of Kotri, goats reign supreme.

I asked his supremacy for an interview but he merely bleated and trotted away to take care of some affairs that he had pending.

Volunteer Noel with the Alpha-Goat of Kotri