The First Drink of the Year

When you think about drought, Falanfay is the place you’re imagining. Water has been scarce for more than a decade. There are no visible clues of recent rains. The chronic problem of this community of all southeastern Somalia has forced people to look down, instead of up, for their water.

Falanfay, a small village near the Bakool regional capital, Xuddur, sits inside the Somali sorghum belt. In a good year, it is the breadbasket of the country. But when the seasonal Gu and Deyr rains became insufficient some years ago, villagers knew they had a problem. That’s because very little will grow on eight millimeters of rain, when the average is 250 millimeters. More seriously, Falanfay’s only well was unusable.

Ibrahim Golbow has been around long enough to know what to do. In these parts a man needs initiative if he expects to live 90 years through countless droughts and a long civil war, as he has. That’s because in Somalia nothing comes easy. To put it differently: if you sit around, you die. He is a village elder. So when he speaks he holds the attention of his people a group of six hundred who survive on what they can get in Xuddur selling firewood and working odd jobs. But he knows that thirst doesn’t have much tolerance for speeches.

In 2002, ADRA deepened the village well and reinforced the walls. A drainage canal and three livestock troughs were also built, and the water was chlorinated. It was during this project that experts realized the soil under the well was highly unstable. They recommended additional assistance to stabilize the ground underneath. But shortly after the job ended, the entire hole collapsed shutting the well for good.

Ibrahim sits on the ground remembering the disappointment of that day how the smiles on the faces of the people disappeared. They didn’t know if they would ever rebuild the well.

At the time, ADRA was fixing other water points in Bakool and in the neighboring Bay region when it found out about the collapse of the Falanfay well. Ibrahim wanted to open up the well again. And he had convinced his people to do the job themselves. But they needed help.

Right away, water experts came to the village to decide what to do. Because the ground was likely to shift again, especial plastic molds were ordered from Nairobi, since there aren’t any in Somalia. When the molds were ready, a truck ferried them across the vast open country of eastern Kenya, into Somalia. The trip lasted almost a year.

When the molds finally got to Falanfay, the rebuilding began immediately. The wellhead was demolished and the upper section was widened to allow the molds to go through. This caused a lot of silting in the well, and removing the debris took several months. Once the hole was clean and the diameter was wide enough, the villagers rigged a system of ropes and wood to lower the molds.

For all the effort, Falanfay should have gotten its water right there and then. However, after all that, the well was nearly dry. Dig a little deeper, they said. The villagers dug by hand. Then sat on the ground to wait. They would stay there until they got their water back.

One hour. Two. Three. Four. Ibrahim and the rest of Falanfay waited. Then, someone saw the water rising slowly inside the deep, dark open hole.

Four years to see the water.