Clean water is a right

摘要

Growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in the 1950s, Anna Tibaijuka would earn a couple of cents by sorting coffee beans for her father. With one of these coins she would buy a sweet from an Indian shopkeeper. With the other, she would buy potable water from a kiosk. But when she returned to her hometown in early 1960s, the kiosk was no more. Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's first president, had declared water free. When it cost a cent, not a drop was wasted, Mrs Tibaijuka recalls. But when the tap ran freely, water was squandered, and-inevitably-stopped.