Dobe Trip

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Written: Saturday September 26th, 2009 at 4:30pm
I spent the past three days camping and assessing boreholes in Dobe (about 6 hours away by road) with two other coworkers. The boreholes (wells) have been drilled in the extremely rural areas in order for the indigenous communities who are living there to have access to water (It was part of a project which was designed to secure land for these communities). One borehole may provide water for just a few families (not because of a limited supply but because only a few families may live in one area). The problem is that the pumping equipment has not been maintained and it has worn out or been damaged by elephants, porcupines and livestock. The lack of maintenance is a result of a lack of funding and also because of the locations of the boreholes. They are in areas that are so remote that it is difficult to access them. Some of the damage to the equipment by animals is also a result of poor design. The reason that we went to visit the boreholes was so that we could actually see the condition of the equipment so that the problems can be resolved (some funding has now been secured for this). Since I couldn’t speak the languages in those communities, I did my best to just take notes and pictures of the broken equipment. The language spoken by many of the people includes the “click.” Most of the boreholes are equipped with a solar panel which provides electricity for the pump but there are also those which require fuel and so that can also be a problem.
Although the people have access to water in these areas, they don’t have access to much else. Many of them are surviving on monthly food baskets which are brought in by truck but it isn’t enough. There are some wild foods that can be gathered but when there is nothing else some of the people survive only on the milk that they can get from their cattle. The only things that exist in these areas are the boreholes, the land and the homes of the people, some of which are just sticks tied together with string or grass. Most of the people living in these tiny villages don’t work, are extremely malnourished and are living in extreme poverty.
Although we were camping in a very remote area, I didn’t really see any wildlife. We were camping in tents so I guess it was maybe a good thing. We cooked our food over a fire and shared it with some of the villagers that had helped us earlier in the day. There were lightning storms every night and I thought that the tent was going to collapse from the wind and rain. One of the tent poles was broken so we propped it up with some bricks.

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