Popular Hollywood actress who is also American-Nigerian, Uzo Aduba has a few hours ago, taken to her social media page to share a story about her giving back to her country Nigeria, as she partners some Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) to provide clean water to some identified communities in the country.
Uzo Aduba who shared a little background about her experience coming to visit Nigeria when she was a child, talked about how water has been one of the biggest challenges faced by African children and women, and surprisingly, the same problem she went through when she first came to Nigerian when she was just 8, still persist.
She put up some photos of her project while captioning the photos with:
The first time I came home to Nigeria, I was 8 years old. I was with my family & remember being so excited for everything- visiting my parents’ homes, seeing relations I’d either never met or hadn’t seen in years, standing on the land where I am from.
After a brief stop in the city, we’d head to our ancestral home in the village. Village life is a slice unlike anything that could ever be found elsewhere. There’s laughter, love, a slowing down of life, community, family & a genuine appreciation for every blessing that has been favored over your life. I love the village. But, with it comes inequities that, at times, cannot be described or explained.
From my first trip, I couldn’t understand the lack surrounding so many basic human needs. Chief among them was the lack of clean, drinkable & useable water. If my family & I wanted to bathe or cook, we’d use the water we had collected from the rains. If we wanted water to drink or brush our teeth, it had to come from the bottled water we’d brought with us, and if it ran out…well, it ran out & we drank the rain water. It didn’t make sense to me at 8 or as I grew and would return home. It makes even less sense to me now. 69 million Nigerians live without clean, drinkable or useable water. I know it’s not the entire country living like this. I know as a nation we’ve seen tremendous growth that makes us all proud. But, we still have far too many in this country only surviving, not thriving. Far too many parents losing their children to water born infectious & diarrheal diseases that could be set in our nation’s past. The time is now.
Through a joint effort of EVERY community taking up behavioral changes, like hand washing & stopping open defecation; paired with unwavering & committed support from passionate state leaders, like @edu_betta of Cross River, working to bring Nigeria & her youth to her fullest and brightest potential, we can DO this. I came to Nigeria with @glblctzn& @nationalgeo new docuseries #ACTIVATEwith a single focus in mind: our nation’s children. They are our future, our citizens. They stand where I once stood. The future is what they will inherit. Let’s make it a future worth more than gold.