Beads of water
bounced off his yellow teeth, hands cupped like one of Gideon’s 300 fighting
men, face down to a bronze faucet, he had the gaze of a battle hardened
soldier, his blue T-shirt looked fresh. His green mug was stained with drops of
palm oil. Like many juveniles in the village, he would not resist the
temptation of merely seeing a kodak camera, a dirty 2010 Toyota Landcruiser had
pulled up near a home, a very loud and smiling middle aged man with the camera
in hand jumped out of the rear door like a Guatemala lizard in a frog fested pond,
a family of five was winding up an undersized maize and bean jumbled meal, the
boy would not stand the idling Toyota engine sound, his throat choose not to
swallow anymore maize seeds, his eyes had overpowered the gullet, the love for
optical nutrition was an infatuation. He seemed to imagine, “could this be an
opportunity to take a proper picture for the first time in my life?”
He had suddenly
forgotten that when he was younger, his parents spoke like the mayor of dirt in
the 2011 comedy Rango, “Water, Mr. Rango, water. Without it, there’s nothing
but dust and decay. But with water there’s life.”. Children often forget, but
was this the kind of affliction to forget so easily, the pain to pass away so lightly,
atleast not the pain of walking for water. “Let me tell you something”, an old
man would be heard “in those days, we drank from the brook in the valley and we
trekked to get a drop but now the people of these days are lucky, water finds
you faster than you can find lice in your armpits!”
I arrived in Kyaka II
refugee settlement in south western Uganda, at around the time when farmers
sowed corn, when the leopard was rumored to be giving birth, when it rained and
shined at the same time, I had accumulated like spoils of war, unforgettable
memories of children queuing at water trucks with their jerrycans to collect
water, I had seen elderly women carry clay pots to unattended springs and witnessed
teenage girls pumping dry boreholes as though they were mining oil in the
Kalahari. The water situation was so bad that a family of three would cook,
drink and even take a bath with just 20 litres of water. It is better these
days, a dog can drink from home, the ducklings can even swim in the old
saucepan, thanks to the many faces of support that continue to pour in for the
displaced Congolese refugees. Oxfam where I work as an engineer is doing what
it does best, pump water, pump more water and pump a lot of water, we do extend
pipes to underserved villages and fix broken boreholes. It is a well kept community
secret that if Oxfam leaves this place, the long walk for water will rain on
them once again.
