Barely 10 metres from where the children were defecating in the waters on that warm Tuesday evening, some middle-aged women stooped and scooped some water into empty buckets, at a distance not too far away from where some men were having their baths – in the riverine community of Angiama, a 40-minute speedboat ride from the capital city, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
Leaving Angiama and taking a five-minute boat ride to Oporoma, the biggest local government area headquarters in the state (Southern Ijaw), the story was not in any way different.
In many of the coastal communities in the oil-rich Bayelsa State, there are thousands of households whose situations are similar to what is obtained in Angiama and Oporoma as a large number of them rely on rainwater as their source of drinking, washing and cooking. But even in the rainy season, the people fetch water to keep for the rainy days. And when the rain goes – and the sunny period comes – there is an automatic switch of dependence on the large mass of water that connects the communities together.
Since goods and people are carried through boats from one place to another, the water also serves as the only mode of transportation. Also, close to the jetties in virtually all the communitiesSaturday PUNCHtoured were makeshift toilets built entirely on the waters – where men and women go to defecate and dump refuse. And when it is time for recreation, both the young and the old in these communities jump into the large mass of water to swim. The water has served these communities many purposes in many years and residents were hopeless the situation would change anytime soon.
Imomotimi Ibolo, 35, relocated from Yenagoa to Oporoma about three years ago due to his missionary work and it’s been a hell of an experience, according to him. The shift from a taste of the fairly good life in the city to a poor one in the rural area had given his mind several struggles in time past whether to quit, “but for the love of what I do, I have encouraged myself to stay.”
“We use the water for virtually everything. During the rainy season, rain is our source of water and we make sure we fill every bucket and keg in the house that will carry us to the next time that rain would fall. Thankfully, when it is rainy season here, rain falls almost every day heavily, so we don’t lack water. We fetch, sieve and keep,” he said.
Gesticulating as he took our correspondent to the shoreline, Ibolo dipped his hands into the slowly flowing mass of the water, used his fingers to separate some particles from the water and soaked his mouth into his hands full of it. “Now that the rain is gone, this is what many of us drink. On the day I first arrived in this community, I was terrified when I saw people (including children) drinking this dirty water and I wished there was something I could do to change the situation. How ironical to say I have joined them in drinking from this same source!” he added.
10 children diarrhoea cases per month
The situation in the riverine areas in Bayelsa State is not peculiar to them as there are some 748 million people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – in addition to the fact that an international organisation, Water.org,stated that “every minute, at least one child dies due to a water-related illness.”
It was, however, surprising when many of the residents that our correspondent spoke with claimed they had no cause to panic as they were not usually infected with waterborne diseases through drinking from the same source of water that they defecate in, aside other purposes it serves them, but John Unyima, a medical doctor corps member posted to the Comprehensive Health Centre, Oporoma, said they had every reason to panic.
According to him, the residents had become so addicted to drinking from the poor water supply that they thought everything was okay. “It is not,” he said. He explained that there were always cases of diarrhoea among children in the communities, aside other diseases that the residents contract from the water.
He said, “The water they drink is not good. I travelled to a community called Igbomoturu recently and behold, the water I was served to drink tea was from the river. As a medical doctor, I knew what was at stake and so I asked them to boil it. They were a bit shocked that I asked them to boil the water that ordinarily they would take anytime of the day.
“Ever since I came to this health centre, we have seen serious cases of people infected with diarrhoea. We had about 10 cases of diarrhoea of children less than five years old last December in Oporoma and Angiama alone. Due to this, we embarked on an investigation.
“We found out that most of the children got the disease because their mothers used the ‘water of many functions’ to prepare food for them.
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