We've arrived too late to play the bleeding heart show

A byproduct of going to an environmentally-conscious school, as it turns out, is having daily reminders of wastefulness and opportunities for more sustainable living. There are strategically placed stickers and cards next to light switches or faucets, saying things like "You'd have to do 8,987,892,451 jumping jacks to power this light for 7 minutes." All in all, I say they do a good job in achieving their intended purpose, which I assume is informing me (or if necessary, guilting me) into using less electricity or water. The fact that An Inconvenient Truth has been played a disproportionate number of times at the student center also helps to imply that Al Gore himself will drive-by pepperspray me if I don't comply.

One of the sustainability reminders in our bathroom, hanging from the shower spout next to another sign that tells me in pink lettering how to do an effective self breast exam, says "By reducing the water pressure by 25% during a ten minute shower, you'll save enough water to service an African family for a day."

I think this sign makes a good point. I actually didn't know previously that pressure is something that can be usefully conserved. I also have no doubt that the Average American Family uses water in a gratuitous way that a family in most African countries would find appalling. But really - "African"?

Is the entire continent of Africa really in such a collective state of generalizable negative comparison? And even if it is, is a blurring of dozens of largely destitute and neglected independent states something we want to encourage? It would sound strange to end that phrase with "a European family" or "a North American family," or even "an Asian family," because we're used to hearing about the different, distinguished countries in those areas and after reading that claim we would think to ourselves, "which one?" Our stigma of Poland is different than our stigma of England, and God forbid anyone lump Canada together with the US, so we'd want to know which we were talking about. Conveniently, most people are oblivious enough about nearly every other part of the world that our stigma for any given African country, as diverse as each may actually be, can pretty much fly for the entire continent.

I won't claim any right to be a spokesperson for the Namibian nationalist cause, nor would I claim that I didn't just have to look it up to be 100% sure that Namibia is a country in Africa. I just think that it's odd that we're willing to sacrifice an opportunity to not encourage global geographical and cultural illiteracy for the sake of supposed globally-minded sustainability.

In case you're wondering, some websites (which I won't cite because I'm a dirty plagiarist) just told me that the actual numbers of individual African countries' water consumption, while varied, aren't totally clear. The "water footprint" of Sudan, for example, is as large as the US, but in comparison to us, a lot more of their water use goes to agriculture than personal consumption. Also, naturally, some countries are just richer, and the countries that have abundant rainfall or rivers flowing through them have less of a problem with water scarcity, but that fortuity comes with facing political struggle when the more desolately located countries want the wealth to be shared.

Anyway, the next time I take a shower, I'll reduce my water pressure. But it's going to be in the name of Lesotho and Lesotho alone.