You Never Know the Worth of Water, Until the Well Runs Dry

This picture shows someone who is fully dressed in protective gear, collecting water from a shallow stream. The water appears to be luminescent and an intense shade of green. There is a reflection on the surface of the water from the sun beaming down. The fact that this woman is gathering samples from the stream, fully equipped with personal protective equipment, is empirical evidence that man-made pollution has become uncontainable. In the fictional story “Poison Fish,” by the author Nnedi Okorafor, the characters struggle with having access to clean water, which should be a basic human…