Reflections in Water: Story 2, Rhabiatu

Rhabiatu Amadou

At the public meeting where we invited feedback around the water and customer service Rhabiatu, a female leader, brought up some concerns with being able to get in touch to get more water credit from 4Ward, the local service provider. The issue revolves around the spotty cell phone reception she experiences, meaning that if there isn’t an immediate answer when she calls or texts, 4Ward’s employee can’t reach her when she leaves the small area nearby with cell reception. It’s a flaw in the mobile money process that the company is resolving with IT and interns, but we wanted her to get a full customer service experience, so I asked if I could come by her home to learn more. Arriving at her home an hour later, Rhabiatu scalloped rolled plantain leaves in a bowl with a knife as we spoke. She had concerns about the meter being accurate since the tank doesn’t fill all the way to 500L due to the float valve inside. Could we explain how it all worked? We learned that she got the NUMA household connection as a way to cook and sell prepared food from her home. She’s a single mom and pays for her children’s schooling and their needs through this small business. She also sells sachet/bag water but doesn’t drink that herself because of the price, which is 40x the price per volume than NUMA water, but is convenient since it’s bagged and portable. She sells 1L in sachets for 50 pesewas, or about $0.10. Her 12 year old son, Moses, uses the prepaid water-meter controller to transfer the water credits they’ve purchased. Moses proudly brought the controller out and checked the credit on their meter and showed how to fill their tank with more water. In talking with them, we discovered Rhabiatu’s concerns had been coming from her noticing when the meter turns off at 70% usage to signal the need to get another token. She thought it was turning off because it was all used and felt like she wasn’t getting all she’d paid for. Moses, her son, apparently knew what was going on though. I laughed, noticing that kids everywhere know what’s going on with remotes and technology while their parents are helpless without them. Echoes of “Can you come reset the router?” rang in my head. Some things are truly universal! She started out pretty bristly but as we spent time with here you could see her happiness pour through. That hard exterior we first encountered is because she’s ashrewd businesswoman and single mom who got to where she is by not being taken advantage of. She tracks her costs to the penny, and needed to hear from us that we appreciate that virtue and share it with her as a company. Her family and her future count on her catching all the details and I was glad to see Water4 serving that virtue well in serving her business with convenient access to safe water. It was nice to see her tracking her expenses so carefully taking her future so seriously. We need more of that in the world, and in our safe water enterprises! As we talked her daughter came out of their small one room home and mixed some dried cassava in a bowl, which looked like fine flour, and she then twisted the tap and filled the bowl with NUMA water, mixed it together, and readied it to boil over coals for her dinner as we talked. Effortless... Like a microwave dinner thanks to a water tap at home. I smiled as I watched Rhabiatu’s steely demeanor roll between humor, iron determination, affection for her kids, and the almost unconscious motion of preparing food with a razor sharp knife–affectionate and terrifying like a few other mom’s I have known. They have had a NUMA Now household connection for one year, in that time she’s purchased nearly $100 in water, and even though she lives close to NEXUS walk-up kiosk, she happily pays 12.5% more for the convenience of having it at home. What a woman, what a family, what an impact we’re having together at Water4.