Drinking water

One of the things that really struck me while in Uganda was that they did not seem to have safe drinking water, other than sealed bottles of water. In the 21st century, this is so wrong on so many levels. How in this day and age are there people in the world who do not have safe water to drink? This my friends, has to be a global issue. In Ireland we have had protests over water charges. Our water is generally good and safe to drink. We are privileged compared to those in Uganda and other parts of Africa.The people I was working with had to walk miles to get water and even at that there was no guarantee that the water would be safe. The kids drank bags of water, sometimes flavoured water. On my second day in the school, we had sports day. I heard one of the boys tell his friend that the water he had was contaminated. It is scary knowing that even the children can tell when the water they have is contaminated. It must really be bad in that case. Maybe that is why they drink flavoured water, the colouring of the flavour can hide just how much the water is contaminated. Could you imagine drinking contaminated water? There was no water treatment projects in the part of Uganda that I was in. This means the people have no choice but to drink the water available to them. And if they are collecting water which originated in the rivers around you can be sure that it is contaminated, we seen one of their rivers, or the end of it at least.

Also because of their shortage of water many places did not have proper toilet facilities, there was no water to flush so you had to pee in a hole! Poor sanitation + contaminated water, no wonder there are so many diseases that us in the Western world have to get vaccinated against before we go over.

As a developed world we need to step up and help get safe water to these parts of the world. We need to also teach the people so that they can sustain the structures put in place to ensure treated water for drinking.  But then there is another problem. Even if we are to help them develop structures to treat water so that it is safe to drink what happens during the dry season when they can go for some time without rain? I noticed that after heavy rain the ground quickly absorbed the water. A lot of thought needs to go into an infrastructure that can collect, treat and deliver water to the poorest of the poor. In richer parts of the country, I am sure they have something. We were not staying in a rich house but we were privileged to have running water because the compound had a water tank. But then go up the road and they have nothing! I know people that went to Zambia who did not even have running water. In the 21st century, there should not be any part of the world without running water and safe drinking water. We cannot sit back while this is happening. These people are our brothers and sisters, we must be able to help them, we have to.