Postcards from Lake Chad
The large freshwater Lake Chad basin is a lifeline for the four nations that it straddles (Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria) but drought and the Boko Haram conflict have further fragilized the people who live on its shores.
I recently toured the Chadian side of the lake, visiting communities involved in WFP agricultural projects aimed at building local resilience, thanks to financing from the European Union.
Meet some of the people I talked to…
At 30 years old, Hawa Baba Abakar is already a mother of eight. She counts among 90 women, out of a total of 160 people registered in the town of Balam Bachari, in the outskirts of the Lake Chad region, for a promising farming project. During my three-day journey, I visited four projects focused on agriculture and community gardens.
In the Lake Chad region, WFP and our partners are running around 30 projects thanks to a Euros 4.5-million-euro (US$5.1 million) European Union contribution. Part of what is known as Food-for-Assets, the initiatives help local communities improve their crop production and build resilience while giving them support to tide them through the lean season and beyond.
Hawa is receiving cash for her work. She’s already harvested her first crop- onions- and the maize looks promising.
Malam Adam Soumboye has two wives and 10 children. He ploughed the earth and worked hard; he’s quite proud of the results.
“Thanks to the assistance received I’m more hopeful for the future”, he says. “We grow the food we eat and we can even imagine to sell the surplus so that my family will live better.”
For this kind of Food-for-Assets project, access to land is essential. Malom Aboukar Adam owns parts of the polder (fertile land in the region) but he’s ready to facilitate its access:
“It’s for the well being of all our community,” he says.
After a 40-minute drive from Balam Bachari, I arrive in the village of Bibi Barrage. Boulama Ali Mustapha, a traditional chief, is conscious that strength comes from community unity.
“If you are alone when you have anything to eat, you don’t eat,” he says. “It’s a duty to share when you can.”
On the road to our next destination, I cross a place where people are working on “a natron field”. Natron is basically salt; it’s used for cooking and it’s also very useful for animals to retain water, especially when the temperature soars between 45-50C degrees.
Here, in this lunar landscape, nothing can grow. That’s why it’s so important to provide crucial assistance for people to cultivate wadis in a more efficient and durable way. Natural and fertile oases in the Sahelian Belt, wadis are a fragile barrage against the sand and the desert.
Some 25 kilometers from the northern small town of Liwa, skirting the outer edges of the Chadian side of the lake, 120 extremely vulnerable people are working in a place called Yiri Wadi.
Binto Abakar, a mother of six, is watering the little trees that will be planted around the wadi; a pocket of green in an arid environment.
In this climate, water is more precious than gold.
But climate is not the only challenge. Across the Chadian part of the Lake Chad region more than 130, 000 people have been internally displaced by the Boko Haram attacks. Another 6, 500 Nigerian refugees who fled the Boko Haram insurgency in their homeland are now living in the Dar-es-Salam camp, near Bagasola, the main city of the western region.
We are heading to the next village, further south. In Goumacherom, the Foods-for-Assets project has the particularity to involved local community and internally displaced people (IDP’s). They are working together; they are all from the Kanembou ethnic group.
Mahamat Tcharimi fled the village where he was living two years ago. Luckily, he managed to return to Goumacherom, the place he was born, 60 years ago.
He still remembers his long, harsh walk. But when he arrived with his family, the community welcomed them and gave them food and clothes, despite its meager resources.
Today, three of his 13 children are married and he’s a grandfather, but Mahamat Tcharimi doesn’t think he will go back to the village he left anytime soon.
“We will have our own maize for the first time, and we are also experimenting with growing rice,” he says. “If we have enough money and assistance to build a new, durable well, we will carry on working here even when the project ends.”
Hawa Alhadji Momo is a member of the comittee supervising the site and she’s adamant the project will continue:
“We need a field, not bags of rice,” she says. “This form of assistance is far much better. It gives hope for the future.”
Bana Aladigana, who is raising 12 children, shares this view.
“You work and you know that you will receive cash for your work. With the money I bought food but also clothes for the kids and soap,” she says.
The farm work is a link between those who had the chance to still live in their villages and the ones who had to flee for their lives.
The next step, thanks to the rainy season, will be to plant the Moringa trees all around the cultivated land. Like the Spirulina, which grows naturally on the shores of the lake, Moringa is traditionally known for its nutritious qualities. From roots to leaves, it can be ground into powder and used as a natural supplement in meals.
I can’t wait to come back in six months to see the results…
