Communities in Bauchi State where villagers drink the same water with goats

 

Vanguard 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.”