Rain Rain come again

June 6th 9:52

I've been increasingly obsessing over rain, thinking about it on a daily basis. It rained once since I've been here in the middle of the night for about an hour and a half. It rained really hard, the clattering on the aluminum roofs alerted me that it was raining. Many people were hopeful that the rains had set in and they were ploughing their fields and planting early millet. They tell me that in the rainy season there is so much water that the ground can't absorb it all so it runs in the plough ridges and creates little streams everywhere (which makes some of the low areas impassible). It also becomes really slippery in some areas as the ground has a fair bit of clay in it as well as being quite sandy. Ever since then, for about 2 weeks, I've been waiting for the rain to come so I can stand outside and be completely soaked, maybe take a rain shower in the bathing room. Most people too are waiting for the rain, they are now late and if they don't set in by mid-June people are going to have a hard time planting and harvesting enough food to last through the dry season. Since there is only one rainy season in this area, when the rains come is of extra importance.

Access to water is the biggest challenge facing communities in this District. At the workshop last week all the communities identified access to water as their biggest challenge...one community called Tetaco relies on only one borehole for about 400 people. Each family takes turns supplying the school with water because of this shortage. With only one borehole this means that the women will have to walk long distances to fill their metal basins and carry them back on their heads. I tried to carry a small one on my head (about 1/4 of the size of the big ones the women carry) and it was really heavy and tippy. I spilt water backwards and forwards and to the sides and was exhausted by the time I had made the short trip to the house from the well (about 35m). I don't know how these women can do it for much longer and doing multiple trips in one day. Usually in the morning I walk down to the bore hole and fill up my water bottles - I probably have about 10L of bottles now - to keep them in my room so I have water to drink. I have a little confession to make - the crystal lite I brought is proving to be invaluable - I put a little in the water to give it a little lime taste (like a lemon slice in water) and then I can drink much more. I found I just wasn't drinking enough sometimes of straight water - not because it tastes bad but just because it's hard to chug a lot of water.

So I was thinking about how I was actually missing water and thinking that it's kind of a wimpy thing to miss.....jumping into lakes, turning on the tap, the swirl in the toilet - it all seems so luxurious! I can't think of how many basins of water that would take for me to carry to be able to live that way. But then I thought maybe it's a good thing....it's hard not to have water readily available and it's hard for the people here too. I'm sure any woman gracefully balancing a basin on her head would much rather turn on the tap. Now instead of feeling wimpy I feel a deeper understanding of the people here. I feel more integrated into the community and into their daily lives. It's hard to explain. I'm trying really hard to be responsible for getting the water for my own consumption such as bathing and drinking. I have a large container about 10 gallons which I can fill at the bore hole and ask some one to carry home on a motor bike (I know it's kind of cheating). I can also fill the container at the well carry it home - maybe even on my head :) In the begining Amelia, a 17 year old girl living in the compound, would get my water in the morning but I feel like I need to do this for myself. I depend on the people in the house for a lot of things, a room to sleep, a bed, meals, and instructions on how to do almost anything since most anything is foreign to me. The least I can do is help fetch water, pull up the bucket from the well and sweep.

I made pancakes yesterday for everyone. Luke gave me some bread flour and I bought some cream, eggs and used the maple syrup for sugar. It was quite the adventure as I didn't know how to use the charcoal stove or how much oil to use for the pan....(my minimal skills with electric burners and teflon were of no use) They turned out pretty good - if you put enough mape syrup on anything it will taste good - although they were more like deep fried pancakes. The kids loved the syrup for the most part and I blew up some balloons for them to play with. When I tied a string to the end of the balloon and hit it against my hand like a boxer they all laughed. This morning I made some more to finish to milk and brought them to work so we'll see how they like them...:)

So I am asking myself what should be done? If water is the most pressing challenge - and it affects so many other challenges as well - what should the people do? What can I do? What can we all do? Yesterday I had the experience of actually seeing how wells are dug and now I know that any solution will be immensely hard work. Through the integrated livelihoods Program sponsored by Oxfam which I'm working on communities are receiving loans to make organic mango farms. For this to happen there needs to be a means of irrigation in the dry season or else the trees will try so wells need to be dug so people can irrigate by hand using a calabash. They brought in some contracters to dig the wells as the community members lacked the tools and needed to dig their own holes for the seedlings. One man with a pick axe managed to go down 8ft in one and a half days digging a well about 2m in diameter!!! He would swing the pick axe and break the soft rock - very rich in Micas and sand so it comes out shining - and then shovel the loose soil over the edge. It looked almost effortless as shovelfulls of sand were flying out of the hole but taking one look at the guys abs will tell a different story. One they get down too deep they have to rely on a 2 gallon bucket to lift the sand out. One well hit water at 20ft so now they also have to manually take the water out to be able to dig deeper to have a sustainable water supply. The suprising thing was how they go in and out...there was a plank over top of the well with a knotted rope tied to it. The diggers would put their toes around the knotts and then climb down on the rope. The next thing they have to do is line the wells by dropping cement cylinders in the hole. They have to do it soon because if it starts to rain the wells will cave in and then all their labour and the money will be lost. The gravity of the problem is how hard they have to work to pay that money back, cash income is hard to come buy in subsistence farming communities - especially during the planting season as all the money is spent on farming.