Water is gold.

Let me repeat it here; water is indeed gold. Imagine going a day without using water, at the end of the day you'd end up feeling like hell. You can survive a day without washing your clothes, you can survive a day without bathing, how about going a day without feeling that refreshing moisture of water on your tongue? Oh you can too? Great! How about two days? You can also? That's awesome. Three days?.... Why are you silent? 😂😂

My area is plagued with a scarcity of water I haven't experienced for ages and this has been the case for the past three to four months. Imagine having to think of the next time you will see water rather than savor the one you have in the moment, that's how bad it has gotten. People who use to bath twice a day have reduced it to once a day and coupled with the immense heat that's blowing like flames from hell, life only gets more miserable. It was bearable before the start of the Ramadan month but ever since the fasting started, things have only gotten worse. Sometimes you'd wake up to find that there's no water for you to do the sahr(early morning breakfast) with, sometimes there will not be water to break the fast.

Normally during the fasting period, people flock around cold rooms to purchase ice when it's almost time to break the fast but this time around, most of the cold rooms have been shut down since there's no water to drink let alone make ice. The few who still managed to keep their cold rooms open amidst the fierce drought sell the ice at outrageous prices. One can't really blame them. This gotta be this worst Ramadan I have ever experienced in my lifetime.

These hand trucks have been in use for a long time but are pretty indispensable now. These are used to sell water now. In the initial stages of the drought, a gallon of water costs about 50NGN($0.08) and now, a gallon of water costs about 100NGN($0.17). Some people can't afford it and resort to unclean sources of water. Sad.

Because man doesn't always have sympathy towards his fellow humans, some of this water vendors take advantage of the situation to make extra money of people. They use it to extort money from people by selling it at prices higher than necessary because they know that people will still by, you don't have any other choice. Water is water, it is not a food item that you can substitute with a less cheaper one. This way, some of them charge up to 150NGN per gallon when it should be 100NGN given the water scarcity. That's the country I live in. Everyone complains about the leaders but are sure to be even more corrupt than the leaders they complain about if they are to be in their position. No consideration for your fellow countryman. Just use the opportunity while it lasts.

When I asked an elder what was the cause of this water scarcity, he said that increase in fuel prices has adversely affected power supply (there's also a problem of insufficient power but that's story for another day). He said that since power is needed to run the turbines that generate electricity across the country, and these turbines need fuel(which is scarce now) to run its engines, there's been a reduction on activity and a subsequent decline in power supply which in turn affects those huge pumps used to pump water. That's how the water scarcity came about.

For those who have resorted to unhealthy sources of water, while some take their time to implement primary methods of purification after obtaining the water like applying lumps of alum and chlorine, others simply don't care about all that and this can be very detrimental as we all know. I sometimes try to correct them when I pass by the water body but they're mostly heedless. What do I do? I guess that's what a person has to live with when he dwells in a local area.

The rainy season isn't smiling either. By this time last year there are already signs of the coming of rain but this time around everywhere is just as hot as a furnace. Or is it that we've done something wrong and we're receiving a punishment from God?

Thanks for reading,

Yours Layly,

❤❤❤❤