Who doesn't know that water is an issue in African countries?
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| The scarcity of water in Chwele. PICTURE: PRIVATE. |
There are geographic and climatic factors which define the seasonal scarcity of water in the different landscapes across the African continent, in some cases the lack of water can be related to precarious level of development of an specific country and, in some other cases it can even be related to conflict situation and the refugee flows caused by them, but in the majority of cases populations have to go through the hardship of having no water due to maladministration, incapacity and the bad will of the politicians supposed to represent them.
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| Queue for fetching water in one of the wells. PICTURE: PRIVATE. |
The inhabitants of the village where I live, Chwele, in Western Kenya, have been suffering for a few weeks with the lack of water in their taps for a ridiculous reason. Actually, Chwele has enough water in its underground and enough reservoirs to store and distribute it. The one thing missing is the electricity to put the pumps to work and bring all this water up to the ground. Now comes the best, the electricity is missing because the local political administration didn't pay the bill and after a few months of public debt the local electricity supplier, the company Kenya Power, cut the lines leaving the population without water. Baaaah! What a shame!
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| Queue for fetching water in one of the wells. PICTURE: PRIVATE. |
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| Children queuing for water at one of the wells. PICTURE: PRIVATE. |
Schools, hospitals, the market, the second largest open market in Kenya, have no water. The ordinary population, most of the times children, must walk long distances to the few boreholes and wells available, face incredibly long queues and pay at least twice as the normal price in order to have some liters of water for theirs basic needs. The 20 liters jerry cans can be seeing in every corner of Chwele being dragged by children and grown ups, from early in the morning till late in the evening, weekdays and weekends.
I am glad to be living and working voluntarily in Chwele as part of an German organisation, Open Hearts e. V. (
www.openhearts.jimdo.com), which is diminishing the emergency of the situation. At the right time we just finished the drilling works of a new and very central borehole facilitating the access of the population to water with better quality and, truly, for a symbolic price. We have been supplying market facilities, schools and ordinary households with clean water for two weeks now with an average of 200.000 liters/day.
To start a speech criticizing the incapacity of the politicians, the corruption in the country, the abuse of power and the exploitation of the misery of the population for political purposes is, as hard as it my sound, useless. Till now there are only speculations and no official position taken from the local administration predicting the return of the water supply. In the meantime the citizens keep on chasing after water to fill their jerry cans and praying for the pumps to start working again setting and end to this crises.
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