Welcome to grok.blog.

This blog is about water. It focuses on how people, communities, and governments work together to protect and manage water for their collective well-being and economic progress. The blog especially features the challenges of managing water in developing countries.

I’ve spent twenty years working on water resources and water supply in developing countries.

The blog will pull mainly from my own experience in developing countries – I am based in El Salvador, and I’ve spent twenty years working on water resources and water supply in developing countries. The blog will also pull in articles, research, and ideas from other sources.

“She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.””

Exodus 2:22

Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as “water”, “to drink”, “life”, or “to live”, and had a much more profound figurative meaning… According to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water…

The goal of grok.blog is to motivate people (on Earth) to work in solidarity to protect, conserve, and manage water responsibly.