Tears of joy flowed from Jhu­mantie Mo­hammed af­ter a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) team ar­rived at her home on Fri­day, con­duct­ing tests and start­ing ex­ca­va­tion of a con­demned WASA line which she be­lieves is re­spon­si­ble for the un­der­min­ing of her Debe home.

Wip­ing her eyes, Mo­hammed said she worked hard all her life sell­ing pro­duce in the mar­ket, beat­ing rice and do­ing do­mes­tic work to build her home, which she says now has a con­stant flow of chlo­ri­nat­ed wa­ter run­ning be­neath it.

“I am 72 years old and I worked all my life. I can’t sleep at night, I have to sleep on the couch. It hard for me,” Mo­hammed said, ex­plain­ing that she has been beg­ging for the is­sue to be ad­dressed for near­ly a decade. She fears the con­tin­u­ous wa­ter flow has weak­ened her foun­da­tion, caus­ing steel and re­in­forced con­crete to rot and her house to shift out of shape.