Like this:

Day 7 of our Water Challenge and it seems we’re collectively running out of puff. There’s only a few of us in the office (and tomorrow there’ll be no-one!), we’re all knackered and the postings have dried up like a prune. No show and tell videos from Valler, no skin flicks from Jay, not even any rage emanating from Hayes, and whether Lou and Tara are still living and breathing at all, we have no idea….

To conclude, it’s the end of our week and man, you can tell! There’s a kind of a grimy, exhausted malaise hanging over the team. Even I, King of not washing all that much, feel in need of a good soak. It’s remarkable, just the way the challenge has totally sapped it out of us. The efforts of calculating our water, having to think fully about every water decision, budgeting your loo breaks and just not getting to clean ourselves regularly, it has taken its toll.

And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the pathetic wailing moan of the pampered Westerner, this is the realisation that, regardless of how hard we’ve respectively found the challenge, living in the context of ‘not having’ is incredibly draining! And it just goes to prove how cosseted we are in this country, how much we have and how much we should be grateful. And it makes you admire the people we hear about through our partners even more how they manage what we’ve done for one week every day of their lives and yet are filled with life, light and the love of God. And most of all, it makes you want to make even more of a difference, to our lives and their lives, than ever.

And if for no other reason than this, that makes this challenge worthwhile.

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