The Weight of Water
By Oluwanifemi Bakare
The tap coughed once, twice, then surrendered nothing but air. Amara pressed her palm against the metal, feeling the warmth it had already absorbed from the sun that wasn't yet fully awake. Six-fifteen in the morning, and NEPA had kept their promise from yesterday's notice: no light until evening. Which meant no water pump. Which meant the jerry cans.
She pulled her wrapper tighter and stepped into the compound. Her neighbour, Mama Kemi, was already at her own tap, shaking her head at the silence.
"Na so we go carry water today again," Mama Kemi said, not really to Amara, not really to anyone.
Amara nodded, though she wasn't sure why. They both knew this dance. The generator would come on at seven when Oga Martins woke up, but by then the queue at the borehole would stretch past the mechanic's workshop, past the place where they sold recharge cards, all the way to where the tarred road gave up and became red earth.
She lifted the first jerry can. Twenty litres when full. The yellow plastic had faded to the colour of old teeth, and the handle bit into her palm where calluses had formed and reformed over the years. This was her third jerry can. The first had cracked along the bottom seam during harmattan. The second lived with her sister in Asaba now.
The compound gate creaked as she pushed through it. Outside, the street was already stirring. A few early okada drivers were warming up their bikes, the engines puttering like old men clearing their throats.
"Sister Amara." Joseph waved from beside his motorcycle. At nineteen, he still called her sister though she was only twenty-six. Something about her bearing, perhaps, or the way she moved through the world as if she carried invisible weights.
"Good morning, Joseph. How market?"
"Market dey." He shrugged. "You wan make I carry you go borehole?"
The jerry can was not yet heavy, but her shoulders remembered tomorrow's ache. Still, she shook her head. "Walking is good."
Joseph nodded as if this made perfect sense, though they both knew walking with water was nobody's idea of good. But okada fare for such a short distance seemed foolish when foolish was something she could not afford.
The street sloped downward toward the main road, and her slippers found their rhythm on the uneven concrete. Someone was frying akara; the smell drifted from a compound where a woman bent over a charcoal stove. Amara's stomach responded, but breakfast was rice and groundnut oil waiting at home. The akara was for people with different mathematics.
At the junction, she turned left toward the borehole. Here the buildings sat closer together, like old friends sharing secrets. A barber had set up his equipment under a cashew tree, though no customers had arrived yet. His mirror hung from a low branch, catching the early light and throwing it in small diamonds on the ground.
"You dey come market today?" he called.
"Maybe," she said, which meant probably not.
She knew his story the way neighbours know these things without asking. Three children, wife who sold vegetables by the roadside, dreams of opening a proper shop. The same dreams that lived in different shapes in most of the compounds along this street. Dreams that were not impossible, just expensive.
The queue at the borehole had not yet formed its familiar snake shape, but a few people waited with their containers. Amara recognized Mrs. Adaora, whose husband drove a taxi and who always brought exactly six bottles to fill. Behind her stood a young man Amara didn't know, university-looking, probably visiting someone.
The borehole operator, a thin man who everyone called Engineer though no one knew his real name, was checking the generator. His movements were unhurried, methodical. He had been doing this for so long that urgency had worn away, leaving only the steady certainty of routine.
"Good morning, Engineer."
"Amara. How is the family?"
She almost said "fine" because that was what people said. Instead, she said, "Surviving."
He nodded, understanding something in the word that "fine" would not have carried. His hands moved over the generator's parts with the intimacy of a long acquaintance.
While she waited, Amara watched the university boy check his phone repeatedly, as if the screen might show him something other than the same blank bars where network should be. Network was another thing that came and went like light.
"First time?" she asked him.
He looked up, startled. "Yes. I'm visiting my cousin." His English carried the careful pronunciation of someone who had learned it properly.
"Which compound?"
"The blue house near the—" He gestured vaguely.
"Ah, you mean Emeka's place. Your cousin is Chioma?"
His face brightened. "You know her?"
Amara smiled. This was how neighbourhoods worked. Invisible threads connecting everyone to everyone else. "She buys palm oil from my mother."
The generator coughed to life, and Engineer began the process of starting the pump. First the belts, then the pressure gauge, then the careful adjustment of valves that would coax water from deep in the earth.
Mrs. Adaora went first, filling her bottles with the concentration of someone for whom spillage was not just waste but genuine loss. Each bottle held exactly what her family needed for the day: drinking, cooking, washing. No excess, no cushion against miscalculation.
The university boy - Chioma's cousin - struggled with his jerry can. Twenty litres was heavier than it looked, and his hands had not yet learned the angles and grips that made the weight bearable. Engineer watched him for a moment, then adjusted the flow to make filling easier.
"Thank you," the boy said.
Engineer nodded. This too was part of the routine: helping those who needed help, not because anyone asked, but because water was serious business.
When Amara's turn came, she positioned the jerry can exactly as her mother had taught her: tilted just so, never directly under the flowing water. Too much force and it would splash back, soaking her clothes and wasting what could not be wasted.
The water was clear and cold. It came from somewhere far below, a place that remembered when this land was different, when the roads were paths and the buildings were trees. As the jerry can filled, she thought about depth - how far the water had to travel, how many layers of earth and stone and time it had to pass through before it reached her container.
"Full," Engineer announced.
She tested the weight, lifting slightly. Yes, this was twenty litres. Her body knew these measurements without thinking, the way her grandmother had known the weight of yams, the right amount of palm oil, the moment when pepper soup needed more salt.
The walk back was different. The jerry can changed her gait, made her steps shorter and more deliberate. Her right shoulder took most of the weight; by tomorrow it would be her left shoulder's turn. By next week, both shoulders would ache in that familiar way that meant she was alive, she was managing, she was carrying her share of what needed to be carried.
The sun had climbed higher, bringing with it the promise of heat. Soon the morning coolness would be just a memory, and the day would settle into its rhythm of waiting: waiting for light, waiting for rain, waiting for the next opportunity to present itself.
Joseph was still at the junction, now with a passenger heading toward town. He waved as she passed, and she waved back with her free hand. Such small courtesies cost nothing and meant everything.
Back in the compound, she found her neighbour's daughter, Blessing, waiting by the communal tap with a small bucket. Eight years old, gap-toothed.
"Aunty Amara, our water finish."
Amara looked at the child, then at her own jerry can. Twenty litres had to last until evening, maybe longer if the light didn't return on schedule. But Blessing's bucket would hold perhaps three litres, and children needed water for different reasons than adults needed water.
"Take small," she said, tilting the jerry can.
The water poured clear and bright into the little bucket. Blessing's smile was worth whatever calculations would need adjusting later.
"Thank you, Aunty."
"Greet your mama for me."
Blessing nodded and hurried away, the bucket steady in both hands. Amara watched her navigate the compound's uneven ground with the careful concentration of someone who knew that spillage meant returning to ask again, and asking again was not always possible.
In her own room, Amara set the jerry can beside the others. Two were empty now, waiting for the next trip. One held water from yesterday, precious and carefully portioned. This new one would see her through today if she was mindful.
She measured water into a basin for washing. Just enough to clean her face, her hands, her teeth. The mirror above the basin reflected a woman who looked older in the morning light than she felt inside. Not old, exactly, but settled into herself in a way that came from knowing the weight of things.
From the basin, she moved to the small kerosene stove. Rice needed washing, and rice water could be saved for the plants her mother kept in old paint buckets around the compound. Nothing wasted, everything finding its purpose in the careful economy of days.
As the rice cooked, she prepared for work. Her job at the fabric shop meant being on her feet most of the day, measuring ankara and lace for women who came with specific visions: a wedding dress, school uniforms for September, wrapper sets for church. She liked the work, the way cloth felt between her fingers, the satisfaction of cutting clean, straight lines.
But first, breakfast. Rice with a little groundnut oil, a pinch of salt. Simple food that would keep her until afternoon. As she ate, she listened to the compound waking up around her. Radios tuning into morning programs, mothers calling children to prepare for school, the sound of brooms sweeping away yesterday's dust.
Mama Kemi appeared at her door with a cup of tea.
"I made extra," she said, though they both knew this was kindness disguised as coincidence.
The tea was sweet and hot, flavored with milk and sugar that Mama Kemi could barely afford but shared anyway. This was how they survived the weight of days: small gifts offered without ceremony, accepted without fuss.
"The water came easy this morning," Mama Kemi observed.
"Yes. Engineer was in good spirits."
They sat in comfortable silence.
When Mama Kemi left, Amara finished preparing for work. She wrapped her hair in a bright headtie, chose earrings that would catch the shop's fluorescent light nicely, applied lotion to hands that would handle fabric all day. These small rituals mattered. They were the difference between merely enduring the day and meeting it with intention.
The walk to work took twenty minutes. She could have taken okada, but the morning air was still cool, and walking let her notice things: the way morning glory vines had claimed the fence by the primary school, how the bread vendor arranged his loaves in perfect rows, the particular quality of light that only existed at this hour.
At the junction by the main road, traffic had begun its daily accumulation. Danfo buses painted in yellow and blue, private cars whose owners had enough fuel for daily driving, trucks carrying goods to markets across the state. The air filled with exhaust and voices, the negotiations of people trying to reach their destinations at prices they could manage.
"Sister! Sister!" A conductor hung from the doorway of a danfo, calling for passengers heading to Ikeja. His voice joined the chorus of others, each announcing different destinations, different fares, different possibilities.
Amara walked past the buses, past the queue of people waiting with the particular patience of those who had no choice but to wait. Her destination was only ten more minutes on foot, and walking cost nothing but time.
The fabric shop sat between a pharmacy and a place that repaired phones. Mrs. Okonkwo, the owner, was already arranging the day's display when Amara arrived. Bright ankara prints caught the morning light: geometric patterns in blues and yellows, botanical designs that seemed to move in the gentle breeze.
"You're early," Mrs. Okonkwo observed.
"Traffic was light."
This was their morning greeting, variations on the theme of arrival and acknowledgment. Mrs. Okonkwo was a good employer, which meant she paid on time, allowed for family emergencies, and did not expect miracles when miracles were not possible.
The first customer arrived before nine: a young woman with a baby strapped to her back, looking for material for the child's naming ceremony.
"Something special," she said. "But not too expensive."
Amara understood. Special but affordable was a narrow space, but she had learned to find beauty there. She showed the woman a print in cream and gold, elegant but not elaborate.
"This one is beautiful," the customer said, running her fingers over the fabric.
"For baby's naming?"
"My first child." Pride and nervousness fought in her voice.
Amara measured carefully, cutting generous lengths because first babies deserved generosity, and because the young woman's eyes held the particular brightness of someone discovering that her dreams had weight in the world.
The morning passed in the rhythm of customers and cloth, measurements and change-counting. A schoolgirl buying a ribbon for her hair. An older man selecting material for his wife's birthday outfit. Two friends arguing cheerfully about which print was more suitable for church.
Each transaction was its own small story. The schoolgirl counted her money twice, making sure she had enough for both ribbon and transport home. The older man asked twice about the fabric's quality, not because he doubted it, but because choosing well mattered when money was limited. The friends finally bought both prints they had been debating, deciding that friendship was worth the extra expense.
At noon, Mrs. Okonkwo left for lunch, and Amara minded the shop alone. This was when she liked her work best: the quiet moments between customers when she could arrange the fabrics properly, when the shop felt like a small kingdom under her care.
A woman entered with a photograph.
"I want to sew this exact dress," she said, showing Amara a picture torn from a magazine. "For my daughter's graduation."
The dress was elaborate, with pleats and decorative stitching that would require considerable skill. Amara studied the photograph, calculating yards of fabric, hours of work, the skill level needed.
"This is beautiful work," she said finally. "You have a good tailor?"
"That's the problem. I need to find someone who can do this quality."
Amara considered. She knew three tailors well enough to recommend them. Mama Ekene was the most skilled but also the most expensive. Brother Tunde was reliable and reasonably priced but sometimes rushed his finishing. Aunty Grace was new but talented, still building her reputation.
"What is your budget?" Amara asked gently.
The woman named a figure that would cover fabric and basic construction, but not the elaborate details that made the dress special. Amara felt the familiar weight of other people's limitations, the mathematics of desire and possibility.
"Let me suggest something," she said. "Aunty Grace, she is very good with details. Still building her customer base, so her prices are fair. But you will need to be patient with fittings, make sure everything is correct."
Hope flickered in the woman's eyes. "You think she can do this quality?"
"I think she will try harder because she needs the work to be perfect."
The woman bought fabric for the dress, six yards of deep purple lace that felt substantial under their fingers. As Amara wrapped it carefully in plastic, she thought about graduation days, about daughters and mothers, about the way certain moments demanded celebration even when celebration was expensive.
The afternoon brought heat and fewer customers. Amara reorganized the thread display, swept the floor, wiped down the counter. These tasks required no thought, which left her mind free to wander.
She thought about her own graduation, three years ago. Business administration from the polytechnic. Her mother had bought fabric for a new dress then too, though they had sewn it themselves on the old Singer machine that still lived in the corner of their compound. She thought about the weight of expectations that had come with the certificate, how it had felt like a promise that life would arrange itself differently.
The fabric shop was not what she had imagined, but it was honest work. Mrs. Okonkwo was fair, the customers were mostly kind, and she was learning things about business that the polytechnic had not taught: how to read a customer's budget in their eyes, how to suggest without pushing, how to make small profits feel significant.
At three o'clock, a group of women entered together, talking rapidly in Igbo. They were planning matching outfits for a burial ceremony, negotiating between tradition and budget, between what was expected and what was possible.
Amara listened as they debated colors and styles. This was theater, she knew. They had already decided on most details before entering the shop. The discussion was part of the process, a way of ensuring that every voice was heard, every concern considered.
Eventually they settled on a blue print with subtle silver threading. Nothing too elaborate - the deceased had been elderly, and excess was not appropriate. But nothing too plain either - she had been respected, and respect required acknowledgment.
"Twelve yards each," the eldest woman announced. "We are eight women."
Amara calculated quickly. This was a significant purchase, the kind that would make Mrs. Okonkwo smile when she returned from lunch. But it was also nearly all of their blue stock.
"I will give you a small discount for buying in quantity," she offered.
The women exchanged glances. They had been hoping for this but had not wanted to ask.
"How much discount?"
Amara named a figure that was reasonable for her, meaningful for them. Mrs. Okonkwo would understand. This was how business worked in places where people knew each other's stories.
As she measured and cut the fabric, the women talked about the deceased. A teacher who had worked for forty years at the local primary school. Who had taught some of their children, all of their neighbours' children. Who had never married but had mothered generations anyway.
"She used to say education was like water," one woman remembered. "Essential, but only valuable if it reached people."
Amara thought about this as she wrapped their purchases. Education like water. Both necessary, both sometimes scarce, both requiring effort to obtain and wisdom to use well.
When the women left, the shop felt quiet in a way that was both peaceful and lonely. Mrs. Okonkwo returned from lunch carrying puff-puff in a small bag.
"For us to share," she said, though Amara knew this was another kindness disguised as casual generosity.
They ate the sweet dough balls slowly, savoring the sugar and oil, the brief celebration of afternoon hunger satisfied.
"The blue fabric sold well," Amara reported.
Mrs. Okonkwo nodded. "Burial ceremony?"
"Teacher from the primary school."
"Ah, Madam Uche. She was a good woman."
This was how news travelled in neighbourhoods: through fabric shops and barber chairs, through market stalls and bus stops. Death and birth, marriage and graduation, all the moments that required marking, all the occasions that brought people to buy cloth and thread, to transform ordinary fabric into memory.
The afternoon customers were different from the morning ones. More leisurely, more willing to browse and compare. Women who had finished their morning tasks and could now think about wants rather than just needs.
One customer spent twenty minutes choosing between two very similar prints, holding them up to the light, asking Amara's opinion, finally selecting based on criteria that remained mysterious but were obviously important to her.
Another customer bought just half a yard of lace, enough to trim a blouse or decorate a scarf. Small purchases were often the most carefully considered, Amara had learned. When money was limited, every choice carried weight.
Near closing time, a man entered looking for baby clothes. His wife had just given birth, he explained, and he needed something soft, something appropriate for a new soul making its first acquaintance with the world.
Amara showed him the gentlest fabrics: cotton in pale yellows and greens, prints with tiny elephants and stars. His hands were rough from manual work, but he touched the cloth with surprising delicacy.
"This one," he decided, choosing a print with small moons and clouds. "She likes things that are peaceful."
As Amara cut the fabric, she wondered about the baby, about first nights and first discoveries, about how the world must feel to someone experiencing texture and light and sound for the first time.
Six o'clock brought the time for closing. Mrs. Okonkwo counted the day's earnings while Amara swept the shop and covered the outdoor displays. This was their closing ritual, the way they transferred the day from activity to memory.
"Good day today," Mrs. Okonkwo observed.
"Yes. The burial ceremony order helped."
"Madam Uche. She would be pleased to know her death brought business to honest people."
This was said without irony. Death and life were connected in ways that required acknowledgment rather than sentiment.
The walk home followed the same route as the morning, but everything had changed. The light was different - golden now, casting long shadows that transformed familiar buildings into something more dramatic. The heat had peaked and begun its slow retreat. The street had settled into evening's rhythm.
At the junction, the barber was finishing with his last customer of the day, carefully shaping the man's beard while they both watched traffic pass. The akara seller had been replaced by a woman selling roasted corn, the sweet smell mixing with car exhaust and the green scent of recent rain from somewhere nearby.
In the compound, children had emerged for evening play. Their voices carried the particular joy of freedom after a day of school and chores. They played football with a ball made of plastic bags and string, their laughter bouncing off compound walls.
Amara's room welcomed her with familiar shadows and the faint scent of the lavender soap she kept in her wardrobe. She set down her bag, removed her headtie, stretched her shoulders where the day's tensions had gathered.
From her window, she could see Mama Kemi preparing dinner over a charcoal stove. The older woman moved with economy and grace, each motion serving multiple purposes. Stirring the soup while checking the rice, adjusting the fire while keeping one eye on her youngest child playing nearby.
Amara began her own dinner preparations. Rice left from morning, palm oil heating in a small pot, onions that needed using before they spoiled further. As she cooked, she thought about the day's customers, their stories and needs, the way fabric became part of people's important moments.
The university boy - Chioma's cousin - passed by her window carrying water, his second trip of the day. He was learning the rhythm, she could see. His grip on the jerry can was more confident now, his pace more sustainable.
This was how people adapted: not all at once, but gradually, one trip at a time, until new routines became as natural as breathing.
Seven o'clock brought the generator's familiar rumble from somewhere deeper in the neighbourhood. Not their compound - Oga Martins had decided to wait until eight today - but close enough to suggest that evening would bring some restoration of normal service.
Amara ate her dinner slowly, savoring both the food and the quiet that came with day's end. Through her window, she watched the compound settle into evening's patterns: laundry being collected from lines, children being called for baths, the gradual transition from public life to private rest.
A text message arrived on her phone: her sister in Asaba, asking about their mother's health, sharing news about her own children. Amara typed back carefully, aware that each text cost money but that family required maintenance regardless of expense.
Her mother was fine, she wrote. Working too hard, as always, but fine. The shop was busy. The rains had been good for the garden.
She didn't mention the water situation, the daily calculations, the weight of jerry cans. These were not problems that could be solved from Asaba, and worry was a burden that should not be shared unnecessarily.
As darkness settled over the compound, Amara prepared for sleep. She measured water for tomorrow morning's washing, checked that her work clothes were properly arranged, wound her small alarm clock that ticked through the night like a metal heartbeat.
From outside came the sounds of evening: generators starting up, television programs beginning, the distant music from a bar where people with different daily mathematics gathered to forget their calculations for a few hours.
But here in her room, silence was a luxury she had earned. Tomorrow would bring its own requirements - more water to carry, more fabric to measure, more small stories to witness and participate in. Tonight was for rest, for the particular peace that came from having met the day's demands without compromise.
She thought about water as she settled into sleep. How it connected everything: the morning queue, the afternoon washing, the rice that had fed her, the tea that Mama Kemi had shared. How it moved through the day like a thread, binding moments together, giving weight and meaning to the simplest tasks.
In her dreams, she walked again to the borehole, but the path was different - easier somehow, the jerry can lighter, the water flowing more freely. When she woke in the morning, she would remember the dream's easy walking, its effortless flow, and she would carry that memory with her to the real borehole, where real water waited to be earned through the familiar weight of living.
Oluwanifemi Bakare is a writer of poems, short stories and screenplays. He is seriously in love with films, and has poems published in Free The Verse and Akpata Magazine. He lives between Ogun State and Lagos, Nigeria.
- All rights to this story remain with the author. Please do not repost or reproduce this material without permission.
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