It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound. Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels.
Today, the Citarum is a river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories. So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water. Their occupants no longer try to fish. It is more profitable to forage for rubbish they can salvage and trade - plastic bottles, broken chair legs, rubber gloves - risking disease for one or two pounds a week if they are lucky.
The Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, displays the shocking abuse that mankind has subjected it to.
More than 500 factories, many of them producing textiles which require chemical treatment, line the banks of the 200-mile river, the largest waterway in West Java, spewing waste into the water. On top of the chemicals go all the other kinds of human detritus from the factories and the people who work there. There is no such luxury as a rubbish collection service here. Nor are there any modern toilet facilities. Everything goes into the river.
The filthy water is sucked into the rice paddies, while families risk their health by collecting it for drinking, cooking and washing. Twenty years ago, this was a place of beauty, and the river still served its people well. As one local man, Arifin, recalled: "Our wives did their washing there and our children swam." Its demise began with rapid industrialization during the late 1980s. The mighty Citarum soon became a garbage bin for the factories. And the doomsday effect will spread. It is one of two major rivers that feed Lake Saguling, where the French have built the largest power generator in West Java. Experts predict that as the river chokes, its volume will decrease and the generator will not function properly. The area will be plunged into darkness. But at least the factories will be stilled and their waste will stop flowing.
And perhaps the river will begin to breathe again.
This article first caught my attention because we recently hosted Missionary Rodger White from Indonesia where this river is located. After reading this story (Daily Mail - UK) and looking at the pictures, my mind went to something that has been in my thoughts for the last several weeks. It doesn't take long for the clear, beautiful rivers of each of our lives to become polluted. Our innocence is soiled so quickly in the world we live in. Everywhere you go, there is trash being dumped into our minds. We must be vigilant to stay pure.
We shared lunch today with a sweet couple, Jan and Rod Madden, and at some point got on the subject of checking things out before allowing it into our homes. It is not easy, but as I taught last Sunday in Sunday School, we do not leave the physical door of our homes open and allow anything and everything access. We lock the doors, even set an alarm, to keep unwanted guests from entering. Who says a snake WILL bite you? But I don't want to allow it to even have the chance, so I close the door and keep that snake from even getting the opportunity to come inside my home. What I allow into the river of my home will affect my children's decisions and lifestyle. The accumulated trash, like the river pictured above, will cut off the supply of life-giving water in their spirits. Before long it will begin filling them with poison.
I must ask myself, "Am I doing all I can to keep the trash away from my family?" It is not the easiest job, but anything worthwhile takes work. My kids may not like me sometimes and others may scoff at my choices, but I am called to be a watchman over my home. I refuse to let my home be choked by trash.
Somebody gave up one day trying to keep this river clean and look where it is. Will you give up fighting for the purity of your home?
