Agricultural Productivity and Well Construction

Throughout my service, I have remained committed to the ideal that my role as a development worker is to teach the villagers skills which they can use in the future to better themselves. Therefore, when our Water and Sanitation Committee members decided that they would like to build additional drinking water wells during the upcoming hot season, I told them that we would obtain all of the funding for this project within the village itself. My reasoning is that, thanks to several projects by the two former volunteers in recent years, the villagers already know how to construct wells. The skills which they now need to learn relate to project management and fundraising. Since I am the last volunteer of three in my village, I feel that my role is to ensure that when I leave, any project which we undertake can be replicated in the future.

Therefore, over the past month I have been working with Dramani, the president of our Water and Sanitation Committee, and Aliwata, the secretary, to begin to plan out this project. We sat down together with a local man well versed on the construction of wells using 'bisiw,' or concrete rings. I guided the men through asking questions on the type and quantity of materials required for construction. As we obtained the information, I taught Aliwata how to create a budget sheet, with columns for the type of material, unit of measurement, unit cost, units required, and total cost.

A look down a well made using 'bisiw' (concrete rings).

We then sent villagers to nearby shops to obtain cost estimates for each material. Once this information was obtained, we gathered together to update our budget sheet, total the costs, and determine how much each household would have to contribute to construct one well.

Our next step is to call a meeting with the entire village to discuss how they would like to proceed with this project. Many decisions must be made, including how many wells they would like to construct, where these wells will be sited, and how exactly money will be raised. Although we calculated a rough figure per household, I don't believe that this is a fair way to do it, as some households have about 15 people, while others have over 100 people. But this is a decision the village must make on their own.

The obvious problem in all of this is the scarcity of money in a rural African village. The easy way out is to bend and provide funding, and successfully build a quantity of wells. This approach certainly has it's merit - it would improve water availability. However, this is where I feel I differ, as a Peace Corps volunteer, from other development workers. My role is to foster self-reliance within the community. By again providing funding, I would be reinforcing dependency, and this, I feel, is a major reason why Africa has failed to develop.

I have put a lot of thought into how the funding of this project might go, drifting between optimism and nervousness. In order to comfortably raise money, it is imperative that the village has a successful harvest, since this is where most of their income comes from. As the rainy season progressed, I noticed that the rains were much less than in the previous year. I dreaded that this would have a detrimental effect on the crops, but in actuality, the villagers told me that this was a good thing. Last year, the rains came so often and so heavy that it actually damaged the crops. This year, they got just enough rain, spread out evenly, such that the crops were able to maximize grain production.

The other day, I was going through my normal morning routine of making an oatmeal and peanut butter breakfast while listening to the BBC's morning news program, when a story caught my attention. The program featured experts who spoke of an impending food crises in the Sahel region of Africa; particularly the countries of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The experts cited that a lack of rain during this year's rainy season has led to a poor yield of crop.

This seemed to be in contrast with my village's situation, where they hailed this season as fairly productive. I told my friend Lamissa about this report, and he said its true. Some regions of Mali will have a good harvest, like my area, whereas others did not get nearly enough rain, and their crops dried out prematurely. Our immediate commune got satisfactory rains, but just beyond it, a mere 20 kilometers away, the rains hardly came, and they are staring down at a very rough year ahead.

This has put into perspective for me just how variable subsistence farming is as a livelihood. I am also very thankful that we happened to be in a favorable weather pattern this year. It appears that our project may have been a mere 20 kilometers away from failure. I hope that thanks, in part, to our luck regarding the weather, our well project can be a success, and it can serve as an example to the villagers that they can accomplish many things on their own, without foreign assistance, if they make the effort.