LONG WALK, WATER WALK

 

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.