Water – A Monday Morning Memory by Elizabeth Obadina

Waiting for Water

 A morning breeze blew softly over the king size bed. On the one side her husband lay still in deep sleep on the other she stirred, yawned and stretched. It had been a sticky night. NEPA* had ‘taken light’** early the previous evening and the hours of darkness had been spent fitfully tossing and turning, praying to Shango***, the god of electricity, to restore power, power to the air conditioner, power to the fans, power to the computers, power to the fridge-freezers and power to the water pump. She prayed for power to return her life to the modern world, to 1992.

She stretched and reached for her watch. It would be so nice to find that it was earlier than she suspected, that she could roll over and catch another hour or two’s sleep in pleasant cool of dawn. Perhaps, had it been the weekend, but that was yesterday. Today it was Monday morning. She looked at her watch. A quarter past six already. There was just one thought on her mind. Water.

And then she smiled.

She remembered the barbecue yesterday at the Coca-Cola staff estate, the swimming pool, the pizza oven, the shady trees and the children showering in a hosepipe fight, hosepipes attached to taps, taps running with crystal-clear drinking water which was watering the plants, her children, her friend’s children, the ground - drinking water creating rainbows in the afternoon sunshine but more to the point, drinking water which had been transported twenty five miles back home and was now waiting in five, five-gallon, blue plastic jerry cans on the floor of her kitchen. Drinking water would be available for a few days at least. Drinking water from Coca-Cola’s very own water treatment plant. Pure, sweet and clean - just water – but treasure for her family. Water that was never going to be made into the Coco-Cola, Sprite or Fanta whose millions and millions of glass bottles formed the backdrop to every street scene and every social gathering in Lagos, indeed throughout Nigeria.

This Monday was starting well.

With a smile on her face she rolled out of bed and padded downstairs. Not only was there a power cut but the water had run short too. There was still just enough water stored in the bath of the downstairs bathroom for a few days personal washing. Laundry was going to be more of a problem. She quarter-filled four plastic buckets with water, iron-tinged from the storage tank, and cautiously carried them back upstairs. She was careful not to slop any on the terrazzo floors and staircase. She didn’t want Monday to begin with anyone slipping over onto cold, hard stone. She then repeated the procedure for the upstairs toilets. Partly filling the cisterns with the minimum amount needed to flush.

Her daughter was already awake, ready for a bucket wash, quick to get ready for school. Her sons were more difficult to rouse. She left them all upstairs sleepily getting up and headed back downstairs. She wouldn’t even complain if the boys claimed that thanks to all the swimming the previous day they didn’t need a morning wash – the water could be saved for the evening.

Shooting back the bolts on the heavy iron security doors, she swung open the front and back   doors and slid open the balcony windows to let the morning breeze blow cool air throughout the house. She left the iron-barred security gates padlocked shut on the front entrance and balcony but unlocked the padlocks on the kitchen bars and headed out into the compound to unlock the huge iron security gates so that Chris, her husband’s driver, could get in. He was already there.

“Morning Ma.”

“Morning Chris.”

He picked up a tin bucket from besides the old guard hut. They no longer had a night guard – but that’s different story.

“No point, Chris,” she said, “There’s still no water.”

Chris absent-mindedly turned the compound tap.

There was no water.

“No Ma,” he concurred, “I’ll just …” He took up the bucket and  drifted back into the street. She knew he was going to look for any puddle of water from the swamp at the bottom of the road, a swamp that was rapidly being drained and built over, a swamp with pools of filthy water where mosquitoes thrived. It offended Chris’ professional pride to drive out on a Monday morning in a dirty car. He would find some way of washing off the weekend’s dust and mud.

“OK,” she said and headed back to the kitchen. She knew Chris would be back in time for the school run.

Finding water in the swamps

Her house-help, Magdelene, had appeared from her quarters at the back of the house.

“Morning Ma. Still no water?”

“No, If NEPA doesn’t return, later today we’ll get the generator out and try to pump some up from the borehole and try to fill the water tank.”

Like everyone else in the road, the house had its own borehole, sunk down to the pure white sands underlying the swampy lagoons and low-lying islands of this huge metropolis. Until a new water works had opened last year, purifying the waters of the mighty River Ogun, there had been no government water and they had relied on their own water from their own borehole. Until last year the only water for this mega-city of millions and millions of people had been from an ancient waterworks, completed in 1910 to meet the needs of the small colonial community living in Ikoyi, Victoria and Lagos Islands.

The government water was pure, of international drinking water standard, allegedly, but its supply was erratic and dependent on the even more erratic supply of electricity, NEPA. of which there had been only sporadic bursts of power for weeks. These bursts, supplemented by bursts of power from a petrol generator had managed to keep the fridges and chest freezer cold. But petrol was also in short supply and generator bursts were rationed.

“Don’t open the freezer yet,” she said to Magdalene, “Use the Coca-Cola water for the children’s porridge.”

Magdalene beamed in delight at the sight of the five blue, plastic jerry cans obstructing easy passage around the kitchen. The immediate issue of drinking water was resolved.

“Yes Ma.”

Quaker Oats, highly compacted and vacuum sealed in cans and imported, had become the children’s staple breakfast diet since her daughter’s diagnosis with diabetes a year beforehand. And keeping supplies of insulin cool when there were constant power cuts was a delicate balancing act. It couldn’t go in the freezer and the fridge had to be packed with ice-blocks from the freezer to keep it cool, despite the added insulation offered by its tropical rating. Making ice to use where food was being stored meant using drinking water.

The usual morning routine was to boil water for at least a minute from either the household’s borehole supply or the government tap, preferably using an electric kettle but using the gas stove, and precious bottled gas, if not. The bubbling boiling water was then poured into the top of a gallon-capacity water filter which contained two sandstone water candles and left to drip through to the collecting drum below. Drinking water was then drawn from a tap at the bottom of the drum. Most of that drinking water was then frozen in jars, plastic tumblers or water bottles. The children’s school water bottles had been prepared on Friday and were waiting to be taken from the freezer. The thawing water would give them a cool drink for most of the school day. Meanwhile an insulated water dispenser would be loaded with tumbler blocks of frozen drinking water and left to thaw slowly throughout the day, providing the whole household with cool water to drink. Water for cups of tea and coffee would be drawn directly from the filter.

This Monday the Gods of Coca-Cola had blessed the household with drinking water. No boiling. No filtering. No worries. 

It was a good start to the week.

 

 

*Nigerian Electric Power Authority

**a power cut - usually referred to as 'taking light'.

*** Sango (pronounced Shango) is the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning who breathes fire, wields a double headed axe (magic wand) and exerts immense power.

His statue stands outside of the offices of the National Power Holding Company of Nigeria (formerly NEPA)

Sango sculpted in 1964 by Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994)