wadi – Towards Reconciliation

Water in Chad is a concern that is never far from anyone’s mind. In large cities like the capital, N’Djamena, the concern is not as acute, but even there it is present. Outside of the capital, water is a constant concern. Here in Abeche, Chad’s second largest city, most of the city is without the “on-demand” water supply as we’ve grown accustomed to in the developed world. Even the relatively small percentage of the city that is connected to the city water supply only has water every couple of days at the most. When searching for a house to rent, if the landlord says there is water “2 days on, 2 days off” then you know you’ve found a great location! Often the water that comes only comes in the middle of the night, when demand is lower, and it comes in a trickle. Chadians often wake up in the night to fill water barrels and clay jars, otherwise they will be forced to pay a higher price to have young men bring them water by push cart from a more reliable source.

In the village, the situation is even more troublesome. Some villages have deep wells that have been drilled by Western NGOs, but often when the pumps break there is no one around to repair them. Villages without working wells must go to nearby seasonal riverbeds and dig down until they find water. This maybe be several meters, and once they find water they scoop it with bowls into containers or metal barrels to bring back to the village. The makeshift “wells” are often shared with animals, so the water can very easily be contaminated.

Recently a colleague of ours got funding for a project to replace 5 broken foot pumps at existing well sites with automatic solar powered pumps. The solar pumps automatically pump water during daylight hours into a tank that is plumbed with two spigots where people can come and get water. This water is drawn from deep in the well, typically 40-80 meters deep, and is much cleaner and better tasting than the water from the shallow holes in the riverbeds. Two of the foot pumps our friend replaced were in villages where we have relationships, and one of them was the village where we’ve built several huts. So for those two villages I went along to do the installation and helped out however I could. Check out some pictures below of the installations and the final outcome – clean water at the turn of a spigot!

I recently took off southeast from Abeche with Abdoulaye and his brother, “Omar” to visit their home village, who’s name in Maba is literally “eat and rest.” As it turns out, this is quite the appropriate name because that’s precisely what we did!

I taught them the word “selfie”, although they were already quite familiar with the concept. Chadians love taking selfies!

The trip took about 3 hours to go 90km (56 miles), so you get the idea of what the roads were like. We arrived early afternoon and immediately went to greet the adopted mother of Abdoulaye’s brother. Their mother had given Omar to her sister to raise because she couldn’t have children, so he had grown up in the village and remained there even when Abdoulaye and their mother moved to the city.

Greetings were very warm, and the initial greetings/blessings lasted several minutes each as is their custom. The longer it’s been since you’ve seen someone, the longer the greeting. Even if you repeat the same words over and over (“God Bless, I’m well, thank God, God Bless, Praise God, etc…”), no big deal. So after the initial greetings we were seated on large mats next to where they had stored the peanut harvest (which was convenient because you could just reach over and grab a handful of peanuts whenever you wanted). We spent the afternoon in further greetings every few minutes as the women came by to bring food or the men came in from the fields.

The night in the village is much cooler than in a large town like ours. I slept under a large blanket and still was cold. So the next morning none of us moved to much until the sun had started to warm the air a bit. After a breakfast of sweetened millet with milk and goat’s head soup, we went for a walk around the nearby wadi. A wadi is a seasonal riverbed that runs with lots of water when it rains but during the dry season the water remains underground, sometimes only a few feet. This wadi was full of date palms, mango trees and guava trees. We ate our fill of guavas straight from the trees while watching the monkeys playing in nearby trees.

I was told to ride the horse, apparently they assumed I was too fragile to walk all the way to the wadi
view from horseback, headed to the wadi
The stirrups were sized for someone about a foot shorter than me, so I just let my legs dangle. not. comfortable.
The owner of my horse striking a pose
In the wadi, looking like a band of Wild West outlaws
The wadi was full of guava and mango trees, date palms, and what I think were figs
This flower is incredibly beautiful, especially in contrast to the various shades of brown all around
The broken pump at the village well

That afternoon we walked in a different direction to see the well that was dug several years ago by some charities in cooperation with the European Union. It was located between several villages so that it could be used by all. But no one from the village was trained to repair it, so when a technician who had been working in a nearby town on another project finished the project and left, there was no one responsible or trained to repair it. So for the past year it has sat idle. This is such a common scenario in the developing world. Helping people improve their lives is usually much more complicated than assumed.

As we walked back from the abandoned well, my head began to throb and I started feeling worse and worse. By the time we arrived, I just wanted to lay down and try not to throw up from the pain. When I laid down it was around 5 PM, and I didn’t get up again that night. Fortunately though my friend Abdoulaye sat up with some men, including the village chief, and shared the gospel along with more of his testimony. As I was in and out of consciousness I heard them around me talking, but didn’t know what was going on until he filled me in the next morning. He shared openly, and people were attentive, and when a guy who had been in Sudan started to argue and tell them not to read the Bible, the rest of the group made him be quiet. Abdoulaye was very encouraged by this time!

The next morning, my head still throbbing, we gathered our things and after another round of goat’s head soup, headed home. I arrived at the house around lunchtime, thankful to find a bottle of Alleve and a real bed…

our family's adventures in the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20)

Tag: wadi

Water – An Ever Present Concern

Visiting “Eat and Rest”