By Dr. Umaru Bah, CEO
DataWise Ltd.
Daybreak
meets Abdul at the watering hole at Circular Road by Christ Church. By the
large open drainage to be specific. Sometimes in the drainage itself to be more
specific. That’s where part of the pipe-borne water connects. It leaks by
design. Why and how, you shall soon find out.
Abdul marks
daybreak by the soothing blast of a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque. At 5:30
a.m. it sounds the call to Fajr, the first of five daily prayers. Abdul is Muslim but he can’t heed that call.
If he does, he will miss his place in the long queue. And he will miss his
target to net 160,000 leones (Le). That’s a hefty $18.80 cents a day. Which is well
over 1,800 % more than what 72% of his fellow Sierra Leoneans will make by the
end of today.
So,
arguably understandably, Abdul sacrifices the future profit of heaven for the
now profit of here.
 |
| Abdul the WaterBoy with his Bearin |
Thus does
he queue up at 5:00 am. And by 5:45 he has loaded his first of eight trips. That’s
twenty of those rugged yellow five-gallon plastic containers full of that pipe-borne
water by the gutter. He will sell each gallon of water for a little below 12
U.S. cents to mainly offices and a few homes within a one-mile radius.
