The Guardian: 'We woke up in a desert' – the water crisis taking hold across Egypt
Tuesday 4 August 2015 12.05 BST
UN says the country will face ‘absolute water scarcity’ by 2025, but for some villages the catastrophe has already arrived – as the Middle East faces severe heatwave. Mada Masr reports
On a blazing hot summer day, rumours that the water truck is finally arriving spread like wildfire through the village of Ezbit al-Taweel. In minutes, some 100 men, women and children pour onto the town’s main road, each with as many containers as they can carry.
Trying to escape the punishing sun, Osama Sayed and his seven-year-old son, Ahmed, take shelter beneath a bush. “It’s like we’ve travelled back in time, having to wait with jars for the water carrier,” says Sayed. Severe water cuts have repeatedly forced him and the 5,000 other farmers living in this small Nile Delta village to wait hours, sometimes even days, for drinking water, amid a severe heatwave in the Middle East.
Half an hour later the truck finally appears, to the palpable relief of the crowd. “There will be enough for everyone,” promises an elderly driver. “Organise yourselves and separate men from women.” Two workers begin distributing the water, while another collects money from the villagers.
Egypt, once celebrated as the “gift of the Nile”, is in the grips of a serious water crisis. With a rising population and a fixed supply, the country has less water per person each year.
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Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/egypt-water-crisis-intensifies-scarcity
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