Water Keeper--Met on the Way

Have you ever stayed in a motel with one of those free continental breakfasts? We've gotten well acquainted with those, but we have not always mastered the art of opening the plastic packets that often accompany such breakfasts. So at a small motel in Colorado, a man at the next table offered to assist. He had on a T-shirt about being a Waterkeeper. Members of the Waterkeeper Alliance work to preserve and improve the water in their areas. He told us that, thanks to cracking, some people in Alabama have so much methane in their water system that they can light the water that comes out of their tap. Clean water isn't something to be taken for granted.
We discovered this first-hand in a village in Moldova. We were staying in someone's home where the main water source was a well like this one. We had some hand-wash to do, and did it in a basin on the edge of the well. The Romany woman who was looking after the house where we stayed got very, very upset. The basin of laundry water might have tipped into the well and made the water unclean.* We didn't grow up with wells and didn't know any better.
There are over 300 official Waterkeepers around the globe.  And, thank God, there are many, many more unofficial ones.


*We were washing things that go on the lower half of the body. That part of the body is considered unclean among many Romany groups. So this may have made the well ritually unclean as well as literally unclean.