MDG 7: Tell the UN, Amman Imman (Water is Life)
09/17/2010
In the Azawak region of north-central Niger access to water is the difference between life and death
With the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit days away, it is important to remind the General Assembly and the global development community of places like Niger's Azawak Valley, where meeting MDG 7 and reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water should not seen as a goal - but as a necessity.
Azawak Valley, Niger: A Day in the Life
They attach themselves to ropes and descend into the hot, cavernous earth, digging with their hands. If they are lucky, they dig 50, 100, 200 feet down until they find what they are looking for: water to clean off their sweat and dirt-soaked skin; to quench their thirst; to share with their friends and families.
Each excursion down to the depths of the earth brings up a little more than a bowl of water, which they then, in most cases, toss into a small trough for their animals. Hundreds of waifish, thirsty donkeys, camels and cows wait for this dirty water, brought to them by sweaty boys, men and women. They drink it ravenously.
The unlucky explorers find nothing at all. They dig only to be buried alive in their pursuit for water. Touring Niger's Kijigari Village with Amman Imman (Water is Life), an organization working to build sustainable sources of water for those in Kijigari and the surrounding region, I saw the many graves. They stand decorated with tall piles of debris in the place of proper headstones, often kept company by the animals that were once the livelihood of the village, but are now struggling for survival alongside the villagers themselves.
At the far corner of the village, there is a dwindling thread of hope. Women use a pulley system to gather water from a deep well built for them about 30 years ago. As I flung the top half of my body over the edge of this well, however, I saw that it was almost bone dry. As temperatures reached almost 115 degrees at midday, I saw that their precious water would soon disappear.
By drilling what are referred to as borehole wells in the Azawak region of north-central Niger, Amman Imman is trying to outrun a changing climate, which has shortened the rainy season to just two months, dried up all of the groundwater, and taken some of Kijigari's underground explorers as well as many of the region's children as its victims. In the past five years, it has turned a lush, grazing landscape into a desert and, for lack of fertile land, has forced its nomadic families to change their lifestyles and to settle.
It is no wonder that when Amman Imman completed the borehole well in Kijigari Village this past July, local families danced with joy for days. They sang songs of thanks that they had a clean, enduring supply of clean water, so that they would never again see a friend or family member die from the thirst. They rejoiced, knowing that now their little girls could go to school, rather than spending their days, sometimes traveling up to 35 miles roundtrip, with their feet in the hot sand, on the backs of their donkeys, trekking for water.
Zainab, a woman who sits on Kijigari's newly-formed management committee that oversees the borehole said the water problem is especially hard on women, since they rely on it to cook, to clean, to take care of the small children, and it is the young girls who spend the most time fetching water.
"Water is our greatest problem," she said.
Each borehole well taps in into live aquifers 600 to 3,000 feet below the earth's surface, providing water for up to 25,000 people and animals and serving as a catalyst for community development. In Tangarwashane Village, for instance, the site of Amman Imman's first borehole well, a new school has popped up and a partnership with International Relief and Development has resulted in a reforestation and environmental protection program.
In Kijigari, local men made over 4,000 clay bricks, forming an adobe shelter for the borehole's engine, and a wall that surrounds the borehole to protect it from damage and to keep it clean. Eventually, the women plan on growing a vegetable garden within the wall parameters.
With water, there is life.
Now, it is time to take MDG 7 seriously; to ensure the other half million people living in the Azawak are as fruitful and no one is 200 feet below the earth's surface desperately searching for water.
Laurel Lundstrom is the volunteer communications coordinator at Amman Imman.
Beautifully written article. You capture well the life and plight of the people of the Azawak, and the need for water to have all other forms of sustenance. Thank you!
— Ariane Kirtley on 2010-09-19