The African Child, Part 5

Continued from the last blog post, The African Child, part 4 I alighted at the last bus stop, I mean the bus could not go farther than that as the roads were no longer motorable. I still had 2 villages before my village, and I was very tired. I had been in the bus for close to 12 hours and my body ached. Dusk was fast settling and I wondered if I would be able to make the long trek to my village tonight. Co incidentally, the village i was in is the village my mother hailed from. Her younger brother was still there with his family and I then decided to look for them. I saw two children looking wet and dirty with buckets of brownish water balanced gingerly on their heads. The only item of clothing they had on was their shorts, I could not even decipher its color because of dirt. I greeted them in our language and they responded, saluting me courteously as they did so. I demanded that they show me baba Alajo's house( head of village's thrift society). I made them know he is my mother's brother. The children beamed with smiles, looking hungrily at the package in my hands, wondering if the way faring stranger brought something for them. They proceeded to show me the way and I rewarded them with a packet of biscuit each while chiding them for how dirty they looked. The children then  explained to me, that they had to travel for about an hour to get the water they were carrying and that it was for their mother's evening cooking. To get another bucket was roughly an hour's trek to the only well that was still functioning in the heat of this draught. The dry season is always like this they concluded. I fell silent imagining that the dinner I would most likely eat tonight would be made with this tea colored water. I also wondered why no one has helped improved living conditions in the villages. Things were about the way I left them over two decades ago. I wondered about mosquitoes, they  were already humming in my ears. It is a good thing my wife packed an insecticide treated net for me when I was coming, may be I should give it to my ailing mother. The only mistake I made was that I did not bring a keg of water along. On walking through the village, I noticed that many of the children were looking thin and malnourished, some even had scars on their body from the kind of plague that hit my village years back. Now I know it is chicken pox and that it is vaccine preventable. I wondered how many children had lost their lives in this recent episode. I also wondered if these children were vaccinated at all. It is a terrible contrast to the city, where there is electricity ( though epileptic in nature), pipe borne water, and nearby health facilities. Sad to note however, the struggle continues : with fathers being peasant farmers and mothers being petty traders, and children being fed the same tasteless gruel daily. Who will come and save these ones, who is their knight in shinning armor who will deliver them from the elements?