With her tinny fingers, little Ngithi squeezes her mother’s breast to coax out some milk while simultaneously sucking at the nipple. The infant’s feeding, however is disrupted by sudden bouts of cough. The baby only six months tries to ignore the cough but doesn’t succeed.
Helplessly her mother, Lydia Kanini watches her baby’s attempts but without any comment stares in the direction where she goes to fetch water at Ria Murae 10 Km away.
“I have just arrived from Ria Murae with Ngithi tied on my chest, a 20 liters jerry can of water on my head and wet laundered clothes on my back”, Kanini began to explain. “I only go to Ria Murae once in a day because it is very far”, she adds.
With the twenty litres of water in the house, she first washes the previous night’s dirty utensils, then puts aside about 10 litres for her husband and seven children’s bath, the rest is used for cooking. “While at the river I do my laundry, then both the baby and I take a cool bath in the river, fill the jerry can with water and start our journey back home”, the 37 year old mother of eight narrated.
It was during the trip to the water point that Ngithi started coughing. She had had a cold bath and the chilly morning breeze must have permeated through the thick hand woven shawl that her mother had wrapped her in. Now the cough was growing worse and worse. All the other seven children are school going yet they are the only ones that could have baby sat Ngithi.
In the dispassionate tone of one for whom suffering is a way of life, Kanini ventures additional information on the water crisis that has plagued the women folk in her village from the time she was married.
“Even when we are pregnant, we have no choice, but to go to Ria Murae for water and only when one is completely unable, a caring friend may carry a five litre jerry can of water alongside her own 20 liters” Kanini explains.
But how much can five litres of water do? May be wash utensils, and for a family of ten there would still be cooking to do, a husband to bath not forgetting the eight children who are normally pale with dirt at the end of the day, yet one can only go to Ria Murae once and only early in the morning before the sun gets hot.
Mothers who are still weak from delivery receive allot more sympathy and usually draw some help from close relatives, neighbours and friends, but not for long. “If a friend brings five liters, another one may bring three litres. If you have a sympathetic husband he may also offer to ease your burden by going to Ria Murae and to take a bath. Depending on how practical he is, he may also bring a five litre jerry can of water along”, expresses Kanini.
Unfortunately within three weeks, all the helping hands start to disappear one by one and is quickly left to fend for her own.
“Occasionally at US$0.24, a business minded friend may fetch you one 20 litre jerry can of water, but this only depends on how able you are”, Kanini says throwing her hands in expression of hopelessness. Otherwise within three weeks of delivery or less, left with no choice, a nursing mother is forced to tie the baby on the chest and start the daily trips to Ria Murae again, and many are the times they have done just that.
It takes six months or more for a woman’s back to get to its normal health depending on how well she eats.
Elsewhere in the same district women have had to queue up, dig out the sand, sometimes with their bare hands from the dry river beds. Fortunately the time it takes the water to form a scoopable amount is the same time it takes to swing the arm from the paddle to pour the drawn water into the jerry can and back for the next scoop.
The water problem in Mbeere District is felt by both the poor and the rich.
“Even the District Officer (DO) may find himself in a situation where he may go to bed without knowing whether he will take a bath in the morning or not”, commented a man who happened to be standing by.
The cause of the water crisis in Mbeere is partly due to the long spells of drought that are felt over a long period of eight months or more in a year. It only rains between November and February. This is the only season that the womenfolk in Mbeere walk happily singing to the numerous seasonal rivers which are near their homes.
