Water scarcity- a day in the life
I wake up at six every morning sweating from the heat. I rush to the window and peer out hoping to see drops of rain slithering down. But this never happens. I’m a ten year old girl, named Alisha and I have been barely surviving through this no water crisis. My family and I are desperate for water but we never get any.
We spend our days anxious and nervous fearing that water will never come to our safety.
I sponge myself down with damp flannel, trying to get every bit of body odour, grime and dust off me. After I get dressed in shorts and a t-shirt I rush down to help mum with breakfast. It would be rice and maybe potatoes but since there's no water, we can’t cook the rice and boil the potatoes. So it’s just plain roti with chutney.
After breakfast mum rushes off to the massive lines where they collect water. I don’t go to school since my Dad is at work and my mum finds water so I’m in charge of my younger siblings. The water tank comes today to at least half fill our underground tanks. All I hear around outside is people blurting out “HEY! Thats my water”
“OI what did you do that for?”
“ I was in the line first”
Honk honk! That’s the water truck. I rush out excitedly to help the man fill the underground tank up.
“ Hello” said the man trying to be cheerful
“ Hello would you like some help” I replied.
“ Yes thank you” . I lead the man,whose name was Aditya, down to our basement where the underground tank lived. The tank wasn’t extremely big but it was big enough for a month and a half of water. The truck had a long floppy hose that stretched all the way to the tank. We finally got hooked up, then we turned the hose. The water gushed in at a rapid speed. We were done in no time. “Bye” said Aditya.
“Bye and thank you” I replied excitedly.
When my mother got back she looked as if she got in a fight with a bull. She had grazes on her face, arms, knees and feet. There was dark brown splodges of mud splattered all over her. “Are you alright Mum? Would you like me to make dinner while you rest?”
I’m okay I guess, I got pushed around a lot By crowds of people trying to get water and it would be lovely if you made dinner”.
“Okay Mum”. I run into the kitchen start on potatoes, I try not to use too much of the water we had gotten today.
Finally everyone is finished with dinner. At the end of the day I come to realise that I’m going to be fine. When night comes I do everything I can with very little water I have. I brush my teeth and rush to bed getting a little bit of reading in. Then soon I doze off to bed.
