Growing up, water was a luxury. To bathe, we had to trek more than five kilometers to another part of the street. Often, we trekked all this distance and still wouldn't be lucky enough to get water. So, when the government decided to let water run through the old pipes of our neighborhood, even the pots and cups in the house were filled up.
That day, no one could stop me. I washed all my clothes with the soft water that lathered easily. The plates, too, and the plastic bowl were not left stained with the scum caused by the calcium-hardened water we used to draw from deep wells.
The next day, there was no water running from the tap, but we were not bothered. I still washed clothes with a full bucket of water and even rinsed them twice. During that time, after bathing with little water, there were no white soap suds left on my body, which I had to quickly clean off with the towel. There was plenty of water; why manage?
Five days later, there was no water from the tap. Everyone became anxious again. We began to monitor our water usage. Mothers shouted when their children poured out more water than usual for washing. Gradually, everything went back to normal. The large plastic drums, once filled with water, became empty. Then, one early Saturday morning, I was woken with a loud tap on my back. The long trek to find water resumed.
There is something inhumane about lack.
We resumed the long early morning treks with plastic buckets stacked into each other, carried in hopes of getting water. Not even the biting cold of the harmattan seasons in Jos could stop us. We moved in groups, one family waking the next. How we trudged on from one compound to another, standing and knocking at their gates, interrupting their sleep and assuming a posture that would evoke pity when they eventually opened. Sometimes, I knocked until my knuckles blistered. But that didn’t matter as long as they showed us pity and allowed us to fetch from their wells.
Sometimes it worked; other times, a young boy, the homeowner's son, would appear, with a smug look on his face, asking us to leave the compound. "We don't have enough," he'd say in a raspy voice, hands behind his back digging into his buttocks as he scratched vigorously. A buffoon. We would turn back, holding tight to our large buckets, moving to the next compound, still hopeful that one of the compounds would be kind enough to allow us to get a little from what they had. The experience reminds one of privilege. How kids, born into homes fortunate enough to have wells with water in harmattan, were able to have long and peaceful sleeps without being woken by older siblings for a long, and sometimes, futile search for water.
This is why I hate the harmattan period. I scoff when I hear people say, “Save for rainy days.” Growing up, I wished I could save enough water for dry days. Where I grew up, water was a currency, and those who had water during the harmattan held power. For a place like that, the distinction between the haves and the have-nots was on the economics of having water. You were influential if you had a deep well that produced water all year round. Everyone on the street would respect your kids, and people would be nice to you to win your favor. No one dared fight with the troublesome wife of a man whose well they went to every evening to fetch water. Mothers would swallow their insults so that she wouldn’t deny their children a bucket of water when they knocked. To be wealthy, where I grew up, was to have enough water for you and your children.
Kids from compounds with wells that still provided water even during the harshest months of November and January were proud, arrogant, and troublesome.
Why wouldn't they be?
I recall that at the time, there was this compound that allowed people to fetch water only on Saturdays. About 50 families would go there every weekend to get water. A colorful display of water containers stretched in a queue through the compound and into the tarmac on the major road. It was very usual to see people who had come very early, sometime before 4:00 am, sleeping in one corner of the large compound on clothes and wrappers spread on the ground. Everyone had to wait until the person holding the key to the well woke up and then came out to open the well. Sometimes, we waited for hours until the young man in his early twenties walked out of a room with a rickety door hanging loosely on its frame. Typically, he was usually tying a wrapper, with two ends that crisscrossed his chest and then tied behind his head in a knot hanging on his neck.
Usually, not everyone was able to get water. Some days, a young lady would walk out of her room with a heap of clothes, count some buckets, and, with a haughty voice, announce that she wanted to wash so only those buckets she counted would have the privilege of drawing from their well. She wouldn’t mind her peers grumbling from different corners of the queue. She was aware they hated her. She was aware that the young men also despised her even though they flirted with her as a guise to get water to bathe and get to work. Some mothers with children hanging limply behind their backs would walk up to her, saying how they didn’t even have a drop of water in their homes to cook for their little kids. She would ignore them and walk back into her room, shutting the door behind her.
Usually, at this point, I would let out a deep sigh and gather our buckets if we didn’t make the quota. My sister would ask me to wait a little. I simmered with impatience. I just wanted to get out of there. Bastards!
On some other Saturdays, I watched as tenants from the compound stared at us with disdain in their eyes. How they responded stiffly or shunned our enthusiastic and cheerful greetings; to them, their water charity stripped us of every right to civility.
One time, we cowered and greeted when an older woman walked past to the public latrine at the other end of the compound. She would break the queue, causing people to move away while she walked through, stretching forward a plastic container carrying her children’s waste from the previous night. She walked brazenly, not minding the stench stabbing the nose.
Sometimes, an overly eager girl, also in need of water, would offer to sweep the compound just so she could be allowed to leave the queue and fill her own buckets.
I watched how the men in the compound easily touched the ladies in the queue. Older men offered to help girls young enough to be their daughters fetch water faster if they could get their numbers. I heard their lewd comments about the women's buttocks as they walked past with a bucket on their head, which poured and drenched their clothes, causing them to stick to their body, revealing the outline of their figure. They tapped each other and pointed fingers. In their eyes, I saw an awareness of the power they possessed and how they desperately would maximize that power before the rain started falling.
Sometimes, we witnessed a quarreling couple exchange beautifully worded insults. The unspoken rule was that no matter the depth of the insults or the brilliance of the comeback, we must giggle quietly, you dared not laugh out loud. Only the tenants could afford the full pleasure of such entertainment.
It was even worse if your parents had any altercation with any parents from that compound. Brothers had to watch with folded hands as their sisters smiled with bowed heads while men from the compound threw their hands at their backs and let them linger. The subservience was necessary; water was needed at home.
This was fifteen years ago.
I shake my head as the memory flushes through me. I turn on the shower and feel the water hit my face. I stay under it for what seems like eternity. There are no buckets to store water in my house. There is no need for that anymore. Now, I have plenty of water.
More reason why Albert Szent-Gyorgyi said "There is no life without water" because Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium of human