'Neither of you turned out the way I hoped you would.'
On a sharp turn leading on to a fast highway the sign makes a brief appearance flashing the words: “This course is irrigated by effluent water” and disappears. I find myself wondering whether it said “affluent” and if that means the water forms part of the 1% of people who make enough money to join the swanky estate.
The excellent condition of the course suggests otherwise; its lush, green fairways clearly irrigated with water from all walks of life: water that runs down shower drains; garden water that flows down empty streets. Overnight water; spilled water; drain water. Spring water uncollected; standing water unprotected.
Elsewhere, talk around the water cooler turns sombre at the thought of us all running out of water, but perks up at the mention of the quality of the water and that rain will probably come soon.
The conversation becomes a trip down memory lane to the picture on the wall in geography class of the water cycle — the ocean and evaporation and the rain that flows down to the ocean and evaporates again and falls again and flows again.
And that it’s not all that bad because, I mean, how many tons of water are there in the world? And the water tables must surely turn because the tables always turn when the chips are down.
Across town the mayor speaks of the next level and how she aims to take the city to that level with a new-found focus, but she fails to link the level to the dams in the surrounding area and calls instead on hotels to serve less water and more whisky and dry vermouth and vodka distilled and Savanna, which advertising types point out is dry but you can drink it, which is only halfway true because for sure this drought is dry, but you most certainly can’t drink it.
And the water board sets up torture camps in the deep Karoo for hosing fiends, calls it Guantanamo for Gardeners, and makes them sweat in the summer sun. It’s a dry heat, they say, and not so bad.
And the department of water and sanitation runs out of money, sadly, in a seller’s market and loses its way and the focus turns to sand, a “unicorn move” according to analysts to cash in on “the next big thing”.
But the coffers are sucked dry by the tried and tested business model to corrupt, cash in and repeat, based loosely on the water cycle of evaporate, fall down, repeat, because, like water, there is tons of money to go round.
And waste not, want not, the saying goes for everyone everywhere with sense to put a bucket in the shower or a brick in the toilet.
But will it even help with the grass always greener on the driving range and the glasses always half-full in suburbia because we’re all sucking from the same teat and we’re all accountable in equal measure?
Some are more equal than others, though, and these measures are not enough to break this record brown drought on God’s dying green Earth.