Hello @empress6,

You have such wonderful material here. The circumstances you describe are important for everyone to know about, to understand how precious water is. As a story, though, a creative nonfiction story, the piece should have more elements that are characteristic of a story.

A story usually has dialogue. It has specific instances. One example can be taken from the your story.

People fought for water, not always but often. When water is scarce, people change, even the good people. Hunger can make people desperate, but thirst does something worse, it makes people helpless, angry and impatient.
I remember one day when two women almost fought physically.

"I've been here all day and you come in and steal my jerrycan. Who are you to take my things?" one of them yelled.
"What is that you say? I don't need your can. I have my own can."
Fortunately someone intervened and stopped the women from exchanging blows.

In the example I tried to imagine what the women said. You could do much better. The idea is to go over your story when you have finished, and look for places where you can insert dialogue like that. Make the incident specific.

I just finished a story last week and had the same issue. I wrote a narrative. It was good, but I realized it was all narrative. So I went back and found places where I could insert dialogue, even if the dialogue was someone thinking. Dialogue breaks the piece up and makes it more readable, and real.

You can discount my advice here. You are the author. I'm just trying to give you a few tips I have learned as I try to be a better writer.

Your piece is very strong. You got me thinking about water, and the way I use it. Turning on the tap is easy, but maybe someday there will be no water, or at least no clean water. Water is indeed precious. That message came across. Powerful message.