“I’ve already earmarked a customer for this drum — I need to get a move on,” Ali Ahmat said as he flicked his whip to persuade a horse to press on with his cart, laden with 200 liters of water.
The 12-year-old entrepreneur is one of the informal, but indispensable links in a chain to supply people in Ouaddai, Chad, with water.
Scorching temperatures, an open sky, a shortage of deep wells and lack of water purification systems make this a thirsty part of the world.
Photo: AFP
“After the rainy season, water becomes scarce,” said Mahamat Adoum Doutoum, chief of the Guerri region, where only two deep wells exist for 86,000 inhabitants. “So people go to look for water in the wadi.”
A wadi — “riverbed” in Arabic — is a watercourse that runs strong and fast during the rains and is often dangerous to cross, but largely dry for the rest of the year. When there is no more rain, people dig wells in the wadis and install pumps to extract groundwater.
Ali and dozens of other water carriers flock to the pumps to collect supplies they plan to sell to people who have no access to the source, often in dusty settlements.
Each refill of his 200-liter drum costs Ali 100 CFA francs (US$0.17), but he can sell the water for five times as much in town.
“We do between seven or eight return trips each day, roughly,” he said.
Toward the end of a hot Sunday, the blazing sun has set and Ali’s cart is heading toward Hadjer Hadid. The town harbors a refugee camp for people who fled conflict and mass killings in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the far side of the border.
Pascal, a Sudanese refugee and father of five, is also used to the return trips between the town, the bed of the wadi and the muddy wells.
However, he remains concerned about the quality of the water.
“To drink the water, you also have to add bleach,” Pascal said.
While water has become as rare as it is valuable, the kind to be found around wadis is unsafe. Traditional wells dug into the earth at the wadis provide water that is often the same color as the soil.
“The water can be contaminated at various points, either at the source, which may be unprotected, or during transport ... and during storage and distribution,” said Fabienne Mially, mission chief in Chad for the French aid group Premiere Urgence Internationale (PUI).
The non-governmental organization (NGO) supports 11 health centers in the Ouaddai region, where awareness sessions on the importance of proper drinking water are regularly organized.
In Borota, head of the local health center, Koditog Bokassa, has no illusions — of the six standpipes in the village, none is working.
“They were installed by NGOs,” Bokassa said, adding that wadi water is the only type available.
He handed out sachets of bleach to dilute in untreated water.
However, Bokassa lacks the means to satisfy everybody and PUI has become the sole supplier of bleach in central parts.
The state used to deliver some, but has not done so for more than a year, he said.
The town has holding basins and water towers designed to retain water during the rainy season, “but the holding basins are insufficient and the two water towers broke down several years ago,” a resident named Hassan said.
For Pascal’s household, there are seven 20-liter cans on the stoop.
“I haul water every day, but I have the same problem as everyone else,” he said.
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