the water in adoka

The first day in town, while looking for filter supplies,

Dr. Aba stopped some girls who were walking by and
had them put their bowls down on the ground.
The young girls had just gone to the stream to collect
drinking water. This is what it looks like to the naked eye.

Can you imagine what it looks like under a microscope?

Above is a photo taken less than 50 metres from a river/water source. Nigerians seem to think they should dump their garbage right beside streams and rivers. The garbage ranges from plastic bottles to batteries, to paper, to rusty buckets to car parts. The children are walking through the garbage to get down to the river. In the top third of the photo, the river is inbetween the garbage and the bushes. Then, not 50 feet from the garbage dump and the river, we saw children relieving themselves...After relieving themselves, the children run down to the river to bathe and do their laundry. Many people also relieve themselves in the stream when no one is looking, or their "gifts" left on the banks are later washed into the river during the wet season. After bathing, washing laundry, and relieving themselves, the women and children load up their buckets full of water to take home to drink....

There are several places in town that have large tanks with "Buy your clean water here" painted on the sides. I don't know where they procure their clean water or how they ensure it is clean. But I certainly was not comforted when I saw this tanker trunk on the other side of the stream. The men dumped one end of the hose in the stream, hooked it up to the truck and started pumping water into the truck. Who knows what the destination is... I would probably just get more angry...

Below is me beside one of the rivers where people get their drinking water from. January to March is dry season, so the level of the river will only go down and the water will become more and more disgusting... but people have no other options due to the complexities of poverty (i.e. no money, no education, no understanding of hygiene)