Water crisis in Dandafuri: Men struggle to find wives

● One of the non-functioning boreholes

Some men in Dandafuri, a township in the Wa Munic­ipality of the Upper West Region are in a state of unhap­piness over their inability to woo and marry women outside their community due to the water crisis in the town.

The community has five boreholes but none of them is functional and women have to travel a long distance to the next community to get water for the home.

This, according to the men the Spectator spoke to, ‘scare’ away prospective wives from other communities who rejects their marriage proposals with the inadequate supply of water as a reason.

“We’re in a difficult sit­uation because of our water problem. When we propose to women outside the communi­ty, they refuses outright and would remark that ‘Dandafuri? No way; I cannot come and struggle for water every­day”, Mr Adamu Mahama, a community member told The Spectator newspaper during a community visit.

The Spectator observed that five nonfunctional bore­holes were drilled by politi­cians without due consultation with the community, hence they were sited at areas with low water volumes, making it difficult to access water.

According to the Unit Committee Chairman of the community, Mr Sumaila Idris, most of the boreholes were drilled during the rainy season so much consultation was not done to get a good place to situate them.

He explained that one of the boreholes was even con­nected to solar but had not been functional in the last five years.

According to Madam Sadia, a woman in the community, they had to endure hours in queues at the only function­ing borehole which had also broken down recently due to the pressure on it.

 “We have the boreholes but you can pump forever and no water will come out; they are like white elephants because they are not serving their purpose so we mostly depend on rainwater during the rainy season.”

She said”: “even with the functioning one that has bro­ken down, we sometimes go to the pump at 6am and return to the house at 10am.”

This situation, she said, was affecting their wards’ ed­ucation especially females and younger children because the mothers and the older girls mostly went water hunting and return home late.

“By the time they go to school, it will be quite late because we come home late to prepare the smaller ones for school and the older fe­males also help us to find wa­ter before they go to school”, she lamented and said the rainy season had been gener­ous to them and lessoned their burden.

Even at the school, she explained that the absence of water affected good hygiene practices, such that hand washing was a thing of the past because there was no water for that.

The Chief of the commu­nity, Abdul Salam Issahaku sent an appeal to benevolent bodies to come and assist the community to fix the existing boreholes by drilling to the water table and become use­ful for the community.

From Lydia Darlington Fordjour, Dandafuri