Why City Water, Not City Gas
- Category: Peering Eye
- Date 12-12-2004
- 300 views
Ever heard of a proverbial woman who grew old by drawing empty buckets from a dry well? Some people, such as I, have ever attempted to grow even older by fetching empty air from dry water taps!
For a thousandth time, I have walked to the tap in my compound to open and obtain some water. Surprise! Surprise! The water tap croaks! It deceives me that the entire ocean has been allowed into the pipe that supplies my tap, carrying along a frog that finds the tap closed, gets stuck, and begins to croak the moment I attempt opening the tap.
No water comes out though. I gently hit at the tap to release the frog and allow the water to flow so that I could fetch some, assuming that it is possible to have an object, the size of a frog, to slide and be carried into a water tap.
What I get next is a threat! An imminent snakebite! When once I persisted bothering the tap, tapping nostalgically at it, a hissing sound ensued. Could the frog have been evolving into a snake? wondered I as I took an involuntary step backwards, headlong. I retreated in shame and hast, like the members of the opposition parties backing away from their threatened demonstration at State House.
Interestingly, there was neither a frog nor snake at all; it was one of the City Water antics. The tap was groaning and releasing gas instead of water. Could be some people out there who use dry air for bathing or drinking or cooking, please advise.
Lakini Dawasa! Mnanichekesha sana! Honestly, you amuse me. I wish that the supply of gas instead of water would stop once and for all. Or I will campaign to christen that company “City Air”. Did you even imagine that everyone has the means and appropriate technology to liquidise air into water?
Not every resident, at least. Get it from me; during those days when we received only gas from the taps, we suffered like orphans. Many abandoned their merriments to save for the pushcart water seller who, I heard, was fetching the water from this unhygienic stream near our dwelling where the entire neighbourhood are throwing all sorts nauseating stuff ranging from used condoms to food leftovers.
Later when I was still counting my losses, the television brought forth images of men, sunken in the muddy banks of River Ruvu. They were repairing a water pipe, sixty kilometres away, for the supply of water to Dar es Salaam residents. Some investor was standing nearby, mourning the breakdown of the pipe, after the one near the University yet before another in Kinondoni, and perhaps several others.
What disturbs is that my neighbour’s children always competed, each to be the first one to open the tap and imitate the croaking, as if they were frogs themselves. In fact the habit has persisted, you would think this family is taming frogs, somewhere in the corners of their residence.
Aha! Let me ask. Why do people go deep into the forest to look for an herb, which grows right in their backyard? Dar es Salaam is at the edge of an expansive mass of water, which forms a boundary between this and other distant continents. The Indian Ocean, isn’t it? Why are we dying from dry water taps, which give us gas instead, when the most outstanding feature of this arid coastal city is an ocean?
Why fetch water from a seasonal stream called River Ruvu sixty kilometres away while we are only a metre from the inexhaustible sea; the Indian Ocean? We can even pick our jerry-cans and run to the shore to collect water as we did in childhood at home, without the benefit of the water pipes and taps.
Some free-of-charge advice for you, water suppliers. Save the customers the embarrassment of paying for water and receiving gas instead. Tap the ocean water, which does not require those 60km long pipes which also get blocked or start leaking anytime.
The coast of purifying ocean water right at our doorsteps should be much lower compared to the cost of transporting a lot of muddy, dusty water from a region far away, purifying it and then it before it reaches the destination.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen