Living without water
(This is a true statement by Esther Adi, an volunteer hygiene educator in Nigeria, and one of the millions of persons who live under extreme water stress conditions in the world.)
“My name is Esther Adi. I am an hygiene educator in the village of Okpolikpo, in Nigeria, where there are 3000 people.
I decided to become an hygiene educator after the outbreak of cholera disease, an epidemic which killed a lot of people including my relations in 1996.
Surrounding villages Opialu, Ogege, Omusu and Ogomotu were also affected.
It was most severe in Opialu where between three days more than eighteen people lost their lives.
Between October to November 1996, about 36 people lost their lives in the village. Mr Michael Agbo lost his wife and a grown up son the same day. Also I lost a relation Mr Ejembi Oturkpo and daughter during that period.
What I do as a hygiene educator is to speak to the villagers about the importance of safe drinking water, hygiene education such as washing their hands after defecating, boiling of water before drinking, to inspire them to build latrines and to bury rubbish on the ground which would in turn be used as manure for their farm produce.
I do this by speaking to the women through their age group meetings, and the men through village head, the young adult through the youth leader and the teachers in the primary schools.
There are various kinds of waterborne diseases here, which mainly affect the population. These are – malaria, typhoid, scabies, polio, dysentery, guinea worm and hookworm infections, cholera among others.
A regular person, especially the women in Okpolikpo gets its water from the local stream as mentioned earlier but when the dry season comes the stronger women and young girls treks to about four miles in the early hours of the morning before 4 am to the nearby villages to get water to drink even the water is unsafe and polluted but they are compelled to drink it.
On arrival from that journey, they now go to nearby ponds and seepage pools formed when the water meets the ground surface (which is heavily polluted and a high sources of many water borne diseases) to get water for their cooking.
After all these before they could go to the farm to get the food for the day.
The water resources at Okpolikpo are neither public nor private. It is more of a traditional source. The source of water is from the local stream during the wet season (usually from June to September). At the period of dry season (January to May) they villagers trek about four miles to the nearby village Ogege and Opialu to get water from the river.
There many stories of Okpolikpo residents who were severely harmed by the lack of fresh water.
I lost a cousin of mine by the Regina Ejembi aged 19 years who was drowned in the process of trying to get water for drinking.
Another who died as a result of lack of water is Mary Anthony who was a young mother between the age of 20years during the cholera outbreak in 1996.
Also among the victims is Ms Nurse Dick died due to lack of fresh water. There are cases where deaths occurred from snake bite where the women wake up at night to trek long distances to get water.
A lot of children’s lives were lost and just recently I received the sad news that I lost my niece Felicia ‘alias’ Mama’ Gee’ due to the same issue of lack of fresh.
I can keep on and on but I prefer to stop here as I am becoming emotionally depressed due the lives lost.
The situation has not improved since the last 10, 20 years, I would rather said it worsening because a lot of the able men in the village has dispersed to another village because their wives who some were not born in the village could not cope with the situation.
There is huge number of illiteracy because a lot of the children especially girls would not go to school.
Also a large cases of divorce as most of the girls were married out to older men in order to have some assistances by the in-laws who might have bicycles to get water for the family, by the girls could no longer bear it, they later run back to their families and never go back again.
To worsen the whole situation, we lack access to road in my village. During the raining season, we can only trek to my village.
The government has no interest of the people at heart especially a remote village like Okpolikpo.
Our faith lays our hands and people like you who have the interest of poorest community with severe water problem who could bring us to limelight and any NGO could render assistance.
The government is only interested in their votes, used them during election and dump them after all promises.
When anyone tries to even render assistance, because of their own selfish interest, they tend to satisfy their insatiable purse rather than to help the poor people.
Even under such a somber picture, I hold my faith, because according to an adage that says “a hunger that has hope never dies “, I strongly believe that one day, it may take ages but someone, somewhere will come to our aid.
So that my dream of my people having access to safe water shall come to pass even if I am dead my spirit will rest in peace”.
