 Five-year-old Marlinda Oeleu, after walking barefoot for more than 1.5 km across fields and into
the Indonesian jungle, reaches a small grotto locals believe is magical. (Thane Burnett/Sun Media)
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SUSPINI, Indonesia — When all else fails, they return to the “magic water.”
And take a step backward, every time.
Around the world, a lack of clean drinking water remains the most perplexing ingredient in raising healthy children.
The World Health Organization estimates 1.1 billion people, approximately a sixth of the world’s population, do not have access to safe water. Four in ten humans don’t have adequate sanitation.
And the differences in those who can get a clean glass of water and those who cannot may be measured — not by international borders — but in mere kilometres.
This is certain, here in Timor, part of Indonesia’s gauntlet of volcanic islands which make up the “Pacific Ring of Fire.”
Three little girls set off to quench a thirst. Their sub-villages — each a stop in a larger community called Lapeom — are, at the furthest, three kilometres apart.
But each takes a different direction to fill her bottle.
It is twilight in the sub-village of Suspini, and a new water system, which draws from a nearby reservoir, is failing from a lack of pressure. No system is in place to quickly find the fault.
The family of five-year-old Marlinda Oeleu is not allowed to use a nearby well — it belongs to the other side of the village — and they can’t go to the reservoir, because there’s a fear too much water will be taken.
But village chief Thomas Eba doesn’t fret. He knows his people will simply return to "oeleu" — the place of "magic water" that is also Marlinda’s last name.
So she and her mom, Frida Senkoen — who has walked the half hour to the secluded jungle grotto since she was her daughter’s age — trek barefoot across rough fields, past a parched reservoir, over dry river beds and into a moist crack in the earth that likely hasn’t changed much in a thousand years.
Except for the soap packs and bits of discarded plastic littered around.
The oeleu is formed by giant roots that reach like dark fingers into pitted rock. Pools of slowly moving water shimmer.
Frida will bathe Marlinda and her sister Anastasia. Others will clean clothes and pots. Then all, until the pipe is fixed, will collect their drinking water here.
During the long walk back with a heavy pot, the sun will set. The family pauses long enough to watch local children dance among embers of fields set afire in the hopes of better crops to come. And Marlinda will get home and eagerly drink water that, despite coming from a magical place, is unclean.
A couple of kilometres away, three-year-old Maria Ilfina is thirsty. In the morning, she and her mom, Farolina Selan, head to a spring. It’s a ten-minute walk.
During the three months of the rainy season, which starts in December, the spring is full, but the rest of the hot year it dries up.
The dregs that are left — today, a puddle — are tainted.
Arriving back home, and as Maria takes a drink, her mom says when her daughter is an adult, she will likely one day walk her own children to the same spring. So they can drink.
And finally, in the nearby sub-village of Fatualam, four-year-old Florentine Manhitu simply walks across the street with her mom, Krisenzia, for a drink.
The community counts on well water, supplied with the help of World Vision.
Florentine may not have any toys, but she has clean water.
“And she’s never been sick,” boasts her mom, as she draws from the well.
Three little girls. Practically neighbours. One will drink water fit for consumption today. Two others will continue to take steps backward, on a planet that — even village to village — struggles to quench the most basic thirst.
