On my long flight from Accra, Ghana, to England’s capital, London, I was utterly parched after relishing my in-flight lunch meal – white rice with chicken sauce. I desperately needed to quench my thirst, which was still strong despite gulping two glasses of water on the airplane.
Immediately, we touched down and passed through immigration. I checked into my hotel room and realized that in my desperation for “H2O,” I was failing to appreciate the beauty of the room in which I was to spend three nights. However, my thirst was strong, and I quickly dashed into the tall, black cabinet in the sidewall of the room.
It housed a few tea bags, sugar, sachets of coffee, milk, and some confectioneries. Alas! Two bottles of “Woh-ah” – my fake British accent yelled in my thoughts – sat at the top shelf of the cabinet. I wasted no time in grabbing one of the pair, gulped it as though it was my last taste of potable drinking water (which nearly seemed so during my sojourn in England). I gasped for breath after hydrating.
Then, I unpacked my stuff and finally solaced the cold, fragranced room in all its modern architectural glory. Ha! It was indeed a spectacle worth beholding. But my admiration was short-lived when I was lullabied into a deep nap by the cold breeze which saturated the room.
After an hour’s sleep, the sound wave of my phone’s ringtone hit the nearest solid object, jumped through the air, and directly hit my eardrum, waking me. It was a phone call from a colleague to ready me up for a stroll on London’s streets. We, together with some ten others, succumbed to the city which is not ready to let go of its ancient architectural designs. Although old, the layout of the city mixed with some gigantic modern buildings made it naturally appealing to the eye.
I was thirsty again from the long hours of walking, but I was not ready to spend 2 pounds (40 cedis equivalent) on just a bottle of water after spending 11 pounds (almost GHs200) from my depleting coffers on fries with chicken nuggets.
My lips and tongue dried up by the chilly weather, I waited patiently to get to the room for the last bottle on the shelf. Once I reached my room, I could not wait any longer. I twisted off the bottle’s cap – an effervescence broke out, but I was not bothered by the fizzle I heard until my first gulp. Yikes!
“Is this water or Sprite?” – I said to myself. Unlike the usual sweetened taste of Sprite, this tasted bland. I looked at the label on the bottle, and there it was written “Sparkling Spring water.” I had tasted what we call in Ghana “active water”. I never liked it.
This was not going to be any different. I kept the almost full bottle in the fridge to wait for a day when I had no option but to drink it. And so, my daily quest for London’s “still water” began.
I would always and meticulously look out for the phrase “Still water” on the label of anything that looked like water before I sipped it. This was discomforting unlike in Ghana requesting water, you usually do not have to tell the vendor you want “still water.”
I was not the only person who struggled to drench my throat with the carbonated water. Some of my colleagues and I would carry along empty bottles to refill with still water even after drinking a good volume of it. This was to avoid another struggle between our taste buds and the fizzling water.
My daily quest for “still water” and insipid experience with the “Sparkling water” made me reflect on the current environmental menace back home, wreaked by illegal miners on our water bodies. It reminded me of the many residents in Ghana’s hinterlands and along riverbanks who depend on rivers, streams for their domestic chores and for drinking. Their daily headache to access potable water was a quintessence of my struggle for “still water” on the King’s land.
At least 70% of Ghana’s rivers are now a milky sludge running through the country into the sea. This is the very source of water which flows into Ghana Water Limited’s treatment plants and is distributed to our homes. The Illegal mining activities along water bodies have polluted them, making it unsafe to drink.
A farmer, who ordinarily would fetch from the once clear river to quench his thirst after an exhausting day on their farm, is now spending on bags of sachet water to be carried to his plantation for irrigation. The unreliable rains and polluted rivers exacerbated by Climate Change are making farming in Ghana unattractive and an uphill task than its former days of using conventional farming tools when the ecosystem was not disturbed.
At least in London, I relied on tap water in my room whenever I had no bottle of water in the fridge, because it was safe to drink. But the same could not be said back home. You either have brownish water flowing through your tap or a clear water with a significant amount of toxic chemicals dissolved in it. Its smell alone was evidence enough to confirm the little knowledge I have on the characteristics of potable water, that good drinking water should not have a smell.
The water distributing company is now expending huge sums of money to treat water to be distributed to various homes, constraining the finances of the company. If the rivers were clear enough, the company would rather be looking at ways to improve its services and provide potable water for drinking. But now, they find themselves purchasing exorbitant coagulants and other water treating chemicals.
It is disturbing to know it may take many years to restore our rivers to their originality, but it is never too late for the country and its citizenry, led by the government, to take bold and pragmatic steps in fighting the illegal mining menace to save our water bodies.
I am not here to offer solutions, because we already know and have a plethora of them to end the canker. It is time for us to act now.
Water, they say, is life. Our bodies, made of at least 60% water, will rely on these rivers to keep in shape.
Save our water bodies to save lives.
The writer, Emmanuel Bright Quaicoe, is a Science journalist with the Multimedia Group Limited.
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