Ndiyam, or What's the Deal with Water?

Many people have asked me about the water situation in my area, seeing as I live in a desert and  am an agriculture volunteer. How does that work? My region, known as the Fouta, is indeed a desert; however, we are bordered by the Senegal River that branches out into several tributaries. Thus, while it only rains three months out of the year, those villages that are near a river have year round water access. Those villages that are not near a water sources have other means for accessing water.

Household Water

An old well that no one uses anymore 

In terms of water that is used by a household (drinking, batching, watching, cooking, etc), villages either have “robinets” (outside spigots), wells, or both. Women typically use ropes either with or without pulleys to lift water out of the well, which in my area are between 40 and 60 meters deep. Villages near rivers will tend to wash clothes and bathe in the river but usually will have a well or a robinet for drinking and cooking. Robinets in smaller villages and towns in the Fuuta are sometimes connected to “forages” or large towers that hold water that is pumped there from a nearby lake. Robinets can be powered by grid electricity or by solar panels.

In wealthier villages each family compound will have their own well or robinet. In less fortunate villages, several families will share a robinet or a well as is the case in my village. This practice poses several problems when there are cuts to robinet water. There are sometimes small arguments over who gets to fill up first and how much water each family is taking.

A forage that stores and pumps water to the robinet

 My village, for example, has a solar powered forage and robinet system. This means that on top of normal cuts to the water, there is no water when there are cloudy days or – as what happened a few days a go—a major sandstorm that blocks out the sun all day.  The months of December to February are usually overcast. During this time period, there can be cuts to the robinets for days at a time. When there is no water, my sisters take turns walking down the road to the nearest well and carry the water back on their heads.

Under sunny conditions, we usually have water between the hours of 11am to 12pm and 4pm to 5pm. Our family is lucky enough to have a robinet in our yard, so we tend to get first dibs over the other families. Once the water has been put into buckets and various other containers (plastic yellow vegetable oil containers are the most preferred), some is put into a clay pot which holds water for drinking. They rest of the containers are placed around the yard and in each building in the compound until they are needed.

A communal robinet with the yellow oil containers people use to store water

Agriculture

River irrigated agriculture on the far side of the bank

Villages who are situated along rivers strategically line up their fields along the banks of the river. Farmers then fill up buckets and watering cans from the river to water their fields. Sometimes, farmers have motor pumps that pump water from the river onto their friends when they are able to afford it or are given one – think farming collectives, political gifts from candidates, or NGO projects.

Villages who are not on a river, have two options: irrigated farming or rain fed farming. For rain fed farming, farmers are restricted to planting during the rainy season in July to early September. Typically, farmers who only plant in the rainy season farm field crops such as corn, beans, millet, sorghum, and rice. A farmer who only farms during the rainy season is at great risk of losing his or her crops if the rains are bad.

Rain-fed agriculture (a combination of beans and corn)

Other farmers are able to irrigate their crops by either relying on well or robinet water and hand watering or by using a canal-flood system. Farmers that water by hand are generally restricted in the size of their farming space unless they are able to hire people to water their fields for them. Additionally, most women’s gardens are hand watered by wells or robinets.

Taredji Canal 

Recently, there have been several large-scale irrigation projects in my region that have been funded by the government of Senegal, other international governments, and some NGOs. These groups hire foreign companies (especially from Portugal for some reason) to build large trenches and basins from rivers to nearby villages who do not have access to the river thus creating a large network of canals. Once villages have a canal, they place all of the farmland off of the canal, and then open gates to flood all of the fields at once. This means that all the farmers of the village have to plant things that require the same watering schedule. Canals enable famers in northern Senegal to grow year-round vegetables as well as rice, a staple in the Senegalese diet, without hand watering. My village operates on a canal irrigation system and is able to produce year-round vegetables and grains including onions, tomatoes, okra, and rice.

Overall, water is a scare resource in the Fouta. Those days with no water can be tough, but its more of an inconvenience in my town. Villagers have to walk far to go to the fields that are by the canal and cannot farm near their homes. My sisters and I have to walk to the well to get water on days that the robinet is cut. We are fortunate enough to have several sources of water and irrigated fields that other villages do not have.

Taredji irrigated fields on watering day

Firewood

Today I went out to collect firewood with the young girls of my household and the surrounding neighbors. My family protested strongly at me participating in gathering wood because it is tiring, it hurts your body, the trees and thorns give you scratches, and it is a long walk in the sun with no water. Despite their objections, I decided to go anyways to see what this was all about.

Collecting firewood is a typical activity that many NGOs highlight as a household activity that school-aged girls are forced to do which limits the amount of time they have to study. There is a lot of NGO work done to improve cooking methods and fuel sources in order to cut back on this time girls spend away from the house (for PC/Senegal examples, see the rocket stove and paper briquettes). In my household at least, which is fairly progressive towards women, the girls only go out on the weekends or when they don’t have school. The girls I went with are between the ages of six and 12 and are in elementary or middle school.

The tree line 

They head out either in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon and walk out into the bush where there are more trees. The area around the village has long been cleared of dense vegetation, but it is only about a 10 to 15-minuet walk into a heavily forested area. There is a distinct visible line where the trees start compared to the sand dunes near the village. It was striking to see how clearly deforestation has shaped the landscape around Taredji.

On our way out, we spot a goat that has clearly been attacked and eaten by something. I am warned by one girl to run if I see a dog, because they eat people and goats. For some reason I still don’t understand, the girls laugh in disbelief when I say that I am able to run.

Jeri Bah collecting wood from the bushes 

Along the way to the forested area, the girls stop every now and then at a bush to see if it is dead and dry. Only dry branches can be used as firewood, and I was horrible at distinguishing the light yellow from the light brown branches. If there was a dead branch, the girl who found it would pull on it or step on it in any way possible until it broke off. This usually resulted in several minor scrapes and occasionally a fall into the sand when a branch unexpectedly snapped. This continued until we reach the tree line. As all of the trees in our region have thorny branches, I was told I was not allowed to collect wood from the trees and only the branches of the bushes. Of course the girls are adept at carefully picking of the thorny branches with only minor scratches from the thorns, while I sustained major cuts when I tried.  Each girl would gather her own branches and as the branches became too much to carry at one time, she would leave them in a pile for her to pick up on the way back and continue further out into the bush. All of the while, the girls are joking with each other and singing songs.

Jeri Bah, Ana Bah, and Mara Bah bundling their piles of wood

When the girls have collected enough wood, they return to all the piles they have made, break up the branches into manageable pieces, and use scraps of fabric to try them into bundles to make it easier to carry. These bundles are sometime larger than the girl herself. Then the girls take other strips of fabric or their skirts and wad them up into a ball, place it on their heads, fold their bodies in half so that their heads are upside down, and deftly flip the wood onto their heads as they stand up. Then we walk the rest of the way home and drop of the wood to the respective families.

All the girls carrying wood on their heads standing on sand dune

Some of the highlights of the trip were me trying to collect wood and failing, me trying to balance the wood on my head and failing, and the girls finding a dead lizard about 2 feet long. My family got a kick out of me going out and collecting firewood with the girls and how dirty and scratched up I got when I really didn’t collect much wood at all. While it was really fun for me, it was just another chore like washing the dishes or folding laundry. 

Us collecting wood and me looking ridiculous with 2 sticks on my head. 

Another attempt at the picture

A third attempt at the picture 

Site Announcement and CBT Site

I have just returned from a two week stay in my training village in Ngheeho, Senegal. First off before describing what living in small town in Senegal with very little language skills or cultural understanding is like, I have exciting news! When we got back to the training center, they announced where our permanent sites would be. For the next two years I will be living in Taredji, which is a small town in the very most northern part of Senegal right on the border of Mauritania. It is a very conservative Muslim area, and many people are herders. There are two areas of the town one that has between 1,000-2,000 people and one section that has between 5,000-6,000 people. As far as the urban sites the other volunteers in my stage are going to, this is pretty small. However, many of the agroforestry and sustainable agriculture volunteers are in villages with around 200 people. I will be close to several people from my training group (shout out to Erin and Raphael) but sadly will be separated from some people in my langage learning group. Currently, another volunteer works in my site and has several projects going on including a hospital garden and a very successful demonstration garden where he holds trainings on urban farming techniques. I am very excited to get to my site and start working! 

Right now, I am focused on learning the language and culture in my Community Based Training (CBT) site.  This usually involves me making a fool out of myself and having my family and my language teacher laugh at all of my "toubab" (foreigner) mistakes. My family, in particular my grandmother Fatimata, has taken affinity to teaching me inappropriate body parts and making me say them to their friends. A typical morning involves me walking to class and being stopped by random old women on the street who have heard of the toubab who knows how to say "butt" in Pulaar. After this, wild laughter ensues. Pulaar is the craziest language in the world, by the way. It was a verb for every single thing you can possibly think of. Instead of having prepositions, there are different verbs for "to eat", "to eat with", "to eat for", and "to eat at". Also, there are about 20 different pronouns for different types of nouns like liquids, people, trees, etc. They each have their own version of "the". The list goes on and on. 

Culture-wise, I have a very good language and culture teacher that is very strict and has a lot of attitude. Her name is Fatimata (different than my grandmother), and we affectionately call her Sassimata due to her playful but direct sense of humor. She makes sure we know when we have crossed some sort of cultural rule.  My family is very helpful by introducing me to all of our extended family so I can practice greeting people, which is very important culturally and religiously in Senegal.  My family has two wives and one dad and about 12 children plus some miscellaneous relatives that live in our compound. My dad works in large scale livestock business and also sells milk in the market. I frequently sit at the market in the evenings with one of my mothers (who is 24 and has five children, the oldest of which is 10) and practice my Pulaar and various ways to turn down marriage proposals. This is my favorite time of day because my mother buys me peanuts and bananas to eat while I wait for her. 

I will be at the training center for four days and then will be heading to the north to stay with a current volunteer in my area to see their projects and learn about their work. I will end here because I am being eaten alive by mosquitos. Until next time!