Navigating the Challenges of Accessing Clean Water

Water, they say, is life, and its importance in our lives and ability to perform our daily duties can never be overemphasized. But as important as it is, it's worth noting that we must consume the cleanest water in order to maintain a healthier life. Unfortunately, clean water is hard to come by in our world today as it's mostly pleagued with contaminants such as bacteria, microplastics, chemicals, and the like. But despite all this, there are some measures we can put in place to have edible, clean water, and I'd love to share that with you.

As a Nigerian, I usually find it so hard to come across clean water, and regardless of the source or the label placed on the water, it's very hard to trust that it is truly clean. For instance, I mostly relied on sachet water and bottle water as the best way to get clean water, but if you pay a visit to the factories where some of their waters are being purified and packaged, you'll have a change of heart due to how dirty such a place is. Well, not all organizations are like that, but just so you know, there are water factories like that.

Aside from this, we've come to see top brands that produce good and clean water and have a wonderful facility. Someone from a local shop uses their bottles and name to produce their own water and sells it as though it's from the top brands. Many of them have been caught, leaving us citizens with doubt on how to identify the original from the fake. I guess as Nigerians, we play too much because when I had this conversation with a friend and asked him the exact question, he replied by saying, We'll buy, drink, and just pray it's the original.

Well, personally, when it comes to the water I drink, I still prefer buying sachets of water, and it's been my main source of clean water through the years. Although one thing I do is that once in awhile, I usually pay a visit to the factory of those water companies just so I can see the process they undergo in purifying the water and how neat their environment is. Once I notice it doesn't meet my standards for cleanliness, I tend to switch to another company, but I guess it's all a gamble because I only go on such inspections once every three months.

But then, a few months ago, when the price of a bag of sachets of water skyrocketed from around 250 naira per bag to as high as 600 naira per bag. With the hike in almost every sector, the need to cut costs flooded my mind, and one thing I had to stop buying was the sachet water that used to serve as my go-to place for clean water, but since I couldn't afford to spend that much on buying it again, I had to look for other means. I mean, I drink at least 2 bags of that per week, and buying over 10 bags monthly at that amount just seems ridiculous.

So I delve into other means of getting a clean water which is boiling the water and preserving it in a clean place , so I can always take from it to drink whenever I need water to drink, to start with, I actually brought a very big water flask to house the boiled water, so whenever I'm done boiling the water that runs from my tap, i simply just pour it into the water flask, and when I'm tasty, I simply pour some in my cup and drink.

That's how I've been doing for the past 2 months until recently when the price of sachets of water reduced again, and now I use both, because with the boiled water, I now buy fewer sachets of water, helping to cut costs in my journey to getting clean water and living a healthy lifestyle.

I'm looking forward to having another flask so such boiling water can be reserved in larger quantities, and in the process, it will help me completely stop purchasing sachets of water whose price isn't stable and also cause me to spend more. This boiling is cost-effective and produces much cleaner water than the sachet water because I'll be the one making it, and I make sure the flasks and pots I make use of are usually thoroughly clean.

That's about it. Water is life, and its importance is enormous. I want to live a healthy and happy life, and one way I can maintain that is by drinking clean water. Unclean water can bring about different forms of illness, such as diarrhea, typhoid fever, cholera, and the like, that plague our well-being and dent our health. So from today onward, make sure to prioritize the need to always take clean water for the sake of your health and well-being.

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That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed the read and learned something. Have a wonderful day ahead, and stay blessed.

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