Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene November 2018 Vol.13 No.5 | Page 12

Water Supply
Where camels walk on water
Submitted by Tesfaye Bekalu
subsurface dam we visited. I asked him if there is water
for the children in his tukul – a round hut with a cone
thatched roof, common in East Africa - and he shakes
his head. I follow with another question as to why his
children do not drink before his camel does. He pauses
for a minute before responding: “If my camel survives, my
children will survive.”
As the camel drinks, Omar goes close to the camel’s ear
and whispers again and again and again. The camel seems
to listen to him and responds to the whispers by licking
Omar’s face. I ask Omar what he is saying to his camel
and he replied that he is encouraging his camel not to give
up hope. Why? I say. Because the camel is pregnant, he
replies.
Camels can walk on water. I wouldn’t have believed if I
hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. And if you don’t believe
me, well, just look at the picture below to see camels
walking on water in Somaliland!
Yes, it looks like sand, but there is water right underneath
their hooves. This is the brilliance of sand dams and
subsurface dams, where sand effectively serves as a
temporary reservoir cover, protecting the precious water
underneath from evaporating under the blazing sun. Sand
dams provide low-cost, low-maintenance, and replicable
rainwater harvesting technology.
Omar’s is just one of many stories of what rural
communities in Somalia have been going through for
half a century. Somalia has experienced at least 14 severe
drought events since 1960 – that’s around one every four
years. Flooding is also a challenge for rural communities:
just as Somalia was recovering from drought in early 2018,
flooding in the Shabelle region displaced over 230,000
Scrape and scoop the thin layers of sand away with your
hands and they’ll soon be plunged into life-giving and
often life-saving water.
My companion for this incredible sight was Omar.
People from his village call him Omar Shukri (Omar
“the thankful”). Nicknames are common in Somali
communities and this one is more gracious than some
other hilarious monikers! It was certainly appropriate from
my perspective as I was very thankful for his insights.
On a hot day in late September, we spoke while he
watered his camel at Arabsiyo, Somaliland from a recently
completed subsurface dam.
Like many of the people in his village, Omar lost most
of his livestock in the 2016/17 drought, which led to 6.2
million Somalis requiring humanitarian assistance. Close to
400,000 cases of acute child malnutrition were recorded,
and an additional one million people were displaced across
Somalia. Losses in the livestock sector were estimated
at US$2 billion, with people losing between 40 and 60
percent of their herd.
Omar is the father of ten, and his entire family were at the
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • November 2018
The Somali Water for Agro-Pastoral Livelihoods Pilot Project (WALP)
people and affected over 600,000 in April. There have
been five major flood events between 2006 and 2018,
impacting hundreds of thousands of people.
Omar’s eyes are small but radiant, and he looks at the far
horizon as if searching for distant light. I ask what he is
thinking. He tells me that the new subsurface dam is like
Shangri-La for him, but he quickly qualifies this by telling
me I may not fully understand how much this means to
him. He has lived through hunger, thirst, and weak and
crying children around him. So, he does not see a small
dam but rather a deciding factor between life and death.