Faizabad village is located in Guliston community of Vose district. We recently visited this village. In the spring, the village is very beautiful, everywhere is green, but compared to the previous trips, there are less people in this village. If you had come to this village a few months ago, you would have seen women or teenagers carrying water with carts, buckets and other plastic containers on the streets. Now, the bank of the canal passing through the village is empty, it is clear that the houses of this village were also supplied with water by the Project Management Unit for Municipal (communal) Infrastructure Development Projects in Tajikistan with the World Bank funding.
Involuntarily, my eyes fell on the gate, which was open, and I thought a woman was going somewhere. Approaching this gate, I greeted this woman, introduced myself, and also expressed the purpose of my visit. The woman very kindly invited me to her house:
Come in, please, guest, sit on the blanket. I am Kholova Bibihol, a midwife of this village. There are several pregnant women in the village, I wanted to know about their condition. No problem, I’ll talk to you, then I’ll go and see them.
Dear sister, a water pipe was laid in your house, I think it has become much easier for you.
You are completely right, dear sister, we are in comfortable. I grew up in this village. From an early age, my mother, sisters and I carried water, in rural areas, mostly women and girls, and sometimes boys, carry water using carts or donkeys. It was fate that I got married again in this village. I was working, doing housework and carrying water. When my children were small, I suffered a lot, when they grew up, they helped me to carry water.
My husband also took pity on our women and girls and bought water whenever possible. A water truck, which is 5-6 tons, costs 160 somoni, and not every family can buy water with this amount, and we also have a cart. But despite all this, the lack of water at home creates many problems for women. First of all, you cannot keep the cleanliness of the house 100%, you do all the housework using cold water. In short, we suffered a lot.
You are a village midwife, how did the lack of water, especially its transportation, affect women?
I said above that not all families have the opportunity to buy water, some of them do not even have a cart at home. Now imagine that women and girls carry water every day up to 500 meters and more with 15-20 liter containers by hand. Because of my duties, I know all the women of the villages well and they talk to me about all their problems. Almost all of them have stomachaches and kidneyaches. They carried water during pregnancy. There are even cases of women giving birth prematurely. Not only women suffered from lack of water, but girls and boys also had to carry water for a long day, which harmed their education and health. When you came to the village, did you see the dirt on the bank of the village canal?
Yes, I saw, why?
Because drinking this canal water caused a number of diseases such as diarrhea, sore throat, flatulence, especially jaundice in the village. Although we do a lot of explaining things among the people, there are still people who throw children’s diapers, manure and other waste harmful to human health at the canal. During the rainy season, the water rises and all the waste flows into the canal. Summer in the village is very hot, children always drink from canal water, the more often they get sick.
I said goodbye to Bibihol and left the yard. He held out a glass of water from the tap in the yard:
This is Chilla water, drink it, see how tasty it is, as if it were spring water. Involuntarily, my eyes fell on a large water tank and a cement well in the corner of the yard, which were filled with rainwater from the corner of the roof:
Do you still use this well and water tank?
No, but to be honest, I’m still not sure if there is water in my yard. I think that all this is a myth, after all, I have lived under sixty, we have never had water, today no one can believe that we have clean water in our yard, kitchen and bathroom, isn’t this a myth?
I left Bibihol’s yard, I was talking to myself. What a good thing it is to give water to the people, despite having drinking water for several months, this woman still does not believe that today she can use as much water as she wants, and most importantly, this water does not pose a danger to the health of her family.