The Water Journey: From Thirst to Learning

What can stop a child from going to school?

Poverty, illness, and, in the case of Mohammed, the daily multiple 3-Kilometre-journey to fetch drinking water.

Mohammed, 12, is the eldest of his six siblings and lives in Naga al-Brahma in Sohag, Upper Egypt.

Since he was born, there has not been a single house in his village with a drinking water and sewage connection.  

To get water, the villagers send their children to a nearby village where some households have water connections, but it’s not easy. 

Mohammed recounts, "Our village has no water to drink. To get water, we used to ride a donkey to the west to find people with taps. Some people didn’t agree to give us water. They shouted, saying, ‘This water is for money. You pay, you drink.’"  

"I used to go to school only one day a week; the rest of the week, I spent my day on water trips to bring water for my siblings and the animals in the house. I come back at the end of day dead tired." Mohammed said.

In Egypt, many villages still lack drinking water at home due to the high cost of installing household water connections from the main street lines. These costs must be borne by household owners, many of whom are extremely poor and can barely afford to feed and educate their children.  

In December 2023, life took a remarkable turn for Mohammed and his family when, for the first time, water flowed into their home. This transformative change, made possible by the UNICEF-supported revolving fund programme in partnership with the Sohag Water Company, has greatly improved their daily lives and opened new opportunities for their future.The revolving fund is an innovative financing mechanism that makes  water connections accessible to poor households. UNICEF designed this unique programme to assess and prioritize water and sanitation systems in the governorates. They then allocated the necessary financial resources to water companies so that citizens who could not afford household water connections would be funded in the form of a loan. 

Mohammed's father will repay this interest-free loan in monthly installments to the water company,  replenishing the fund's resources and enabling new loans for more families. 

Holding the first glass of water in the house, Mohammed said, "We didn't expect that we will have taps to drink from in our house. I thought I was going to spend my whole life on the water journey." 

The water connection in Mohammed’s house is one of 550 water and 400 sewage connections installed in Sohag Governorate this year with the support of UNICEF and its partners. 

Many of Mohammed's friends in nearby villages still endure the arduous daily journey to get drinking water, as the hand pump water in the villages is salty and polluted. 

Mohammed wishes the world would do more for them: "I want all children to have water so that no child would die of thirst. Little children can’t tolerate thirst like old people. The most important thing in the whole world is  a sip of water."

When children don’t have access to clean water, it negatively impacts their health, nutrition, education and every other aspect of their lives. Now that Mohammed no longer has to worry about fetching water daily, he can focus on other important things in his life, including going to school and dedicating himself to his education.