Photo:Only 1 source of water for humans and animals?

        

Taran and Gaukaka-Lasauya communities of Bauchi State has only one source of water for the villagers and animals to drink from. In Taran community, the villagers feels that it’s the only way of staying alive; it didn’t matter if water borne diseases become their constant ailment.

          

 Vanguard recently paid a visit to Taran in conjuction with the leadership of WaterAid Nigeria.

According to the report:

“We drink water from the same source with our goats. When we get to the stream to fetch water and discover that goats have come ahead of us to drink, what we do is to fetch the surface that we believe the mouths of the goats touched and pour it away, then proceed to fetch our own,” said Rahal Bitrus, one of the women in Taran.

“We don’t have any other source of water. We just reduce the surface and fetch our drinking water even though we know there are consequences, but we are left with no option.

The water sometimes gives us and our children diarrhea and typhoid fever and very painful urine, but we still go ahead and drink it to stay alive.

We trek about nine kilometers to get to the river to fetch the water we are talking about, and, of course, it is affecting our lives, economy and even our children’s education.

This lack of water affects our economy in the sense that we have to look for water before going to the market and, by the time you go and come back, on getting to the market, some transactions would have been made which you must have missed and sometimes we end up not going to the market because we must have been late and prospective customers gone home.”