It’s 6:00 am on a Sunday, and Francis Anwasu is among the first set of people to arrive at a local well. He sits in the queue, braving the cool, dry and dusty early morning Harmattan wind sweeping over the island.
Three women carrying big water bowls join him in the queue, exchanging greetings in their native Egun.
Like many on the island, Anwasu wakes up at 5:00 a.m. daily to begin the daily quest for clean water.
“I arrive here before other people,” Anwasu tells me in pidgin, Nigeria’s lingua franca that is also widely spoken across West and Central Africa. “I do this every day because this is the cleanest water in the community.”
This well is maintained by a small group of women, including Susan Abali, who contribute money every quarter to drill and renovate it. They also regularly treat the water with WaterGuard, a chemical point-of-use treatment for household drinking water, and with chlorine and aluminium sulfate.
The well opens at 6:30 am, noon and 6:00 pm, to allow people to draw water and remains open until the well is empty. It is then locked to allow it to replenish with fresh water until the next scheduled opening.
On this day, Abali unlocks the well, inviting people to collect water before it turns muddy. “People come as early as 3:00 am to drop their water bowls to fetch water,” says Abali, whose house is alongside the well. “The crowd wanting to fetch water is always massive, pushing here and there, but because today is Sunday, that’s why you don’t see them here much.”
By 6:30 am, more people arrive at the well, swarming it with plastic jugs and large water bowls. Anwasu finishes his first round of fetching after about 10 minutes, filling two buckets with water before staggering back to his home about three minutes away with a bucket in each hand.
Anwasu’s neighbour, Deborah Faton, depends on water from the well to make cornmeal porridge, a fermented cereal pudding known locally as pap, that she sells to island residents.
“If I fetch the water, I will wait for some hours to allow possible dirt and particles to settle,” she says. “Any day I don’t see colourless water, or there’s no water at all [at this well], I end up spending 600 NGN [about $1.60] on buying water that day. On days I don’t have money, I buy on credit and return the debt once I make sales.”
For Faton, buying water reduces her profit by 30 percent. So, to avoid having to buy water for cash or on credit, Faton wakes up by 3:00 am, securing a prime position at the well before anyone else arrives.
“If you get to the well quickly,” she says, “you’ll see clean water to fetch. If you don’t get there on time, you’ll get dirty water, and for me, I need clean water to survive and earn decent profits in my business.”