Importance of water: Austin resident and Riverland student Oballa Oballa talks conservation in Africa
Published 6:00 am Friday, April 26, 2019
- Children from a Somalian community wait for more than four hours to collect water at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, where Oballa Oballa spent about 10 years of his childhood. The tap is used by more than 250 people in this part of the camp to use as their main source of water. Photo provided
Provided by the CRWD
Growing up in Africa, Austin resident Oballa Oballa was a strong believer in water conservation.
His family’s lives depended on it.
“Water conservation was one of the most important things my family focused on during the 10 years we had to live in a refugee camp,” said Oballa, who sometimes went two days without drinking water or eating food due to water scarcity.
His family — which fled their native country of Ethiopia in 2003 due to the genocide there targeting the Anuak ethnic group — worked hard in the refugee camp to avoid running out of water, which mainly was used for cooking and drinking.
“In the camp, the water was only distributed twice a day,” said Oballa, who now is the Student Senate president for Riverland Community College in Austin.
Each family had several canisters and received about 20 liters of water (about 5.5 gallons) per person per day.
Oballa Oballa
“Imagine living a life where you only take a shower 3 times a week or wash clothes one time a week, and sometimes you don’t get those options at all,” he said.
Oballa grew up in an Ethiopian town surrounded by lakes and rivers. His family didn’t need to worry about access to water until they were forced to flee the country to save their lives.
In 2005, Oballa’s family arrived at the Dadaab refugee camp in a semi-arid part of Kenya. As of January 2018, Dadaab – a United Nations base – was hosting 235,269 registered refugees and asylum seekers in four camps, making it the third-largest such complex in the world.
“I did not know the importance of water until we were in Dadaab,” Oballa said. “Water is one of the main nutrients that the human body needs on a daily basis.”
People in refugee camps live on the bare minimum, Oballa said, adding that life in the sprawling camp was not easy. Aid agencies struggle to meet the basic needs of each refugee, such as providing each person at least 20 liters of water a day.
Water scarcity is a huge issue in refugee camps and most parts of Africa.
Yet, when Oballa moved to the United States, he saw people wasting water every day, which bothers him.
“Sometimes I tell people at my apartment to stop leaving tap water running and to save water,” he said. “There are so many people out there who do not understand the problem of water shortage because they live in a place with many lakes and an abundance of drinking water.”
Fortunately, the Dadaab camp now has solar energy funded by foreign aid to help produce water and increase water supply to refugees, who now can get the minimum required quantity of water per day.
Connected to water: Read more about Austin’s rich history of water
