“Water Is Life”

I wake up at 4am to start walking to the borehole which is a 45min walk away. I am with my translator Joshua, three women and two 11 year old girls. Walking down a narrow trail and unable to see, there are three flashlights in the group. We get to the borehole and there are already six women waiting there. An hour and a half after arriving at the borehole, a man suddenly arrives with the parts to assemble the handle, and allow the women to start the activity that haunts them daily.

We are lucky today. When I say we, I am referring to the party that I came with to the borehole. We are the last to fill our buckets before the well runs dry. It’s 7am and the well is dry. For the other 12 women and girls here, and the other 30 that are bound to come over the course of the day; this means that they must wait until the water returns to the borehole. Sometimes this takes hours. Sometimes a day. Women will spend an entire day, waiting at the borehole to get just one bucket (25L) of clean water. Think to yourself what you use clean water for and if one bucket would do for your family. Some women don’t even get a bucket in a day. Did I mention that there were girls there as well?

“If I go any farther my neck will snap” is all I can think to myself as I struggle with the 50lb weight I’m carrying on my head. In that 1hr walk back, I took a few breaks, and was only given a glimpse of an activity that is for so many rural women the bane of their existence. In this village, women will make this trip twice a day every second day. On the opposite days it gets worst, they must make a trip that is over twice as far (at least 2.5hrs walking) to the local dam to fetch the dirty water used for bathing and cleaning.

It was the first thing on everyone’s mind. More water. We are at the peak of the dry season right now and this community couldn’t be hit harder. Speaking to the chairman of the village he tells me “Nick . . . water is life, isn’t it? Before our community can pull itself out of poverty we need water”. Men too fetch water daily, using bikes to go to the dam. Sometimes twice.

An inadequate and distant water source has so many repercussions. Women and men are now taking entire days just to sustain the family. This leaves no room for generating or saving income/assets, and leaves them completely vulnerable to any shock. If someone gets sick and needs to be taken to the hospital, how will the rest of the family cope?

I mentioned that there were girls. Optimistic, high-spirited, potentially great, girls are having their futures robbed from them because their entire days are spent perfecting an art that no eleven year old child should be performing flawlessly. A sorrowful smile creeps across my face when I see young girls smiling and laughing as they jump up and down in pairs to drive the pump arm designed for an adult. Because I know that they should be in school investing in their future. It kills me to watch young girls spending entire days waiting for a dry borehole, because I know they are capable of so much more.

I don’t need to be a crystal ball reader to see their future. I simply look at the women in the community and observe their lifestyle and know that their daughters will share the same fate if nothing changes. Everyday that passes is a day that these children are not in school or in someway enhancing their brains or harnessing the potential they are overflowing with. Everyday that this continues only furthers a lost generation.