The Infrastructure Gap

Here is the plainest way to see the whole problem. Draw two points on a map of a village. The first is where people can safely be: the houses, the paths, the dry ground. The second is where the water is: the river, the lake, the place every household has to reach every single day to drink, wash and eat. Now measure the distance between them. Just the distance. In a town with taps and wells and bridges, that distance is nothing; you turn a handle and safe water is in your hand. In much of rural Africa, that distance is a stretch of crocodile bank a person has to walk into, alone, at dawn, with a bucket. That gap, between where you must get water and where it is safe to be, is where people die. Call it the death gap, because that is what it is.