Tag Archive : Water

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Big little things

2019-01-10 | Rwanda | 3 Comments

It’s when you lose access to everyday necessities you realize how privileged you are. In Denmark we have a functioning infrastructure – everybody has access to clean drinking water in their own home, just turn on the tap. We don’t risk electricity outages; our roads don’t get washed away due to rain. We don’t have earthquakes, volcano eruptions, monsoon rain, hurricanes or other natural disasters.

Imagine if you didn’t have a car and you had to collect clean water 1 kilometre from your home every day – you would have to walk or bike. Imagine if sometimes there was no electricity – if you had a refrigerator or freezer the food would go bad. Imagine if the rain washed away the road to your town – it had to be cleared before anyone could leave.

And what about money? – we are so used to use our credit cards, it takes 2 seconds to pay our groceries and we are out the door. Here almost no shops and only a few hotels accept credit cards. You need cash to pay for everything.

I have spent a lot of time looking for an ATM that would accept my credit cards. One day I had to transfer some money – it took forever. At the MoneyGram agent (like Western Union) I couldn’t use my credit card to pay for the transfer, and their ATM didn’t accept my credit card, so I had to find another bank to get the cash to pay for the transfer.

Another example – I had to pay deposit for my hotel in cash. For some reason none of the 8 (yes 8!) ATMs I visited accepted my visa or master card. In the end my mom (thanks mom) sent me money through Western Union. It took less than 10 minutes to get the cash.

Imagine the consequences for your everyday life and work – this is reality in some other countries. In Denmark everything would be more difficult, everything little thing would take so much longer.

I’m so grateful to live in a country were the vital infrastructure is in place. We need to appreciate the big little things that makes our daily lives so much easier.