News reporter recently paid a visit to Taran and Gaukaka-Lasauya
communities of Bauchi State for the instance of the
Leadership of WaterAid Nigeria, a civil society organisation,
CSO, and it was discovered that in these rural communities
were men, pregnant women, youth and children whose
appearance evoked sympathy.

According to the report, in Taran community, there was only
one source of water for the villagers and animals to drink
from.
For the villagers, it’s a choice-less situation; it’s the
only way of staying alive; it didn’t matter if water borne
diseases become their constant ailment.
“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.”
If you as much as drink tap water in your house, be grateful.