Water in the age of coronavirus

In the age of a pandemic, there is one piece of advice repeated again and again by health and government officials: wash your hands. Specifically, wash your hands for 20 seconds with clean water and soap.

But in Morocco – a country where water resources have fallen by 71% since 1980 – access to clean water and sanitation can be challenging, especially for those in the mountains and rural areas. It is during unprecedented times like these that we are reminded of the importance of Dar Si Hmad’s fog harvesting project: a project that captures fog and turns it into clean water for Morocco’s most vulnerable.

For residents in the Anti-Atlas mountains, close to Sidi Ifni, many have to make hours-long trek to get to and from their nearest water source. This trek is most often made by women, who are considered as providers within the household, who can only bring back so much water after a long trek. Access to clean water for those in these regions seems to be, unfortunately, a luxury.

Clean water, however, is a human right. It is a human right that can save lives during the time of a global pandemic. After all, washing your hands and limiting activity outside the home are powerful measures to prevent the contraction and/or spread of coronavirus. But practicing these preventative measures is not easy for those who must travel hours for water. In Morocco, a stay-at-home order was put in place preventing all non-essential travel outside of the house.

Despite temporarily closing our offices in Agadir, we at Dar Si Hmad are carrying on our work to make sure some of Morocco’s vulnerable communities continue having access to clean water. Most importantly, we are currently in the preparation phase for building new CoudFishers – or, fog collectors – in Taloust, an area adjacent to the Boutmezguida fog collection site. Once this construction is done, Dar Si Hmad will be able to provide 32 tons of water a day to 12 additional rural villages of Southwest Morocco.

But the work does stop here, the local communities do come together to support one another in mutual aid. That is why Dar Si Hmad has donated the support proceedings of fog-water for the entire month of March to the beneficiaries.  We continue the tradition of Si Hmad Derhem who, in dire times of need, showed amazing support for these communities. 

Even after the age of coronavirus, however, there will still be work to do. The effects of climate change – which, in Morocco, include tougher, longer and harder droughts – will cause more and more people to risk losing their access to clean water as well as their source of livelihood. Additionally, experts warn that climate change may exacerbate the frequency and spread of diseases like the coronavirus. With so much uncertainty and risk, one thing that is clear is the need for projects like Dar Si Hmad’s fog harvesting project that provide access to clean water. 

Written by: Gari De Ramos, Dar Si Hmad Intern

From the Logbook: Employees of DSH Tell their Stories/ Hussein Soussan and Abderahman Nassiri, Respectively: Fog-Water Manager-Assistant, Driver and Technical Maintenance

 Both Abderahman and Hussein joined the organization in 2011, when we first started the initial building of the fog-collection project. We had a conversation this past 2019 spring during our annual retreat.  This is an abridged section from this exchange: 

 Abderahman Nassiri, Driver and Technical maintenance

Abderahman:  Some of the hardest moments of the fog collection project was in the beginning in July 2011 when we had to take up the building material to the top of the mountain. It was hot, the road extremely difficult and we were still discovering how to do the work

Hussein: Yes, it is true… it was a record year of heat and the work was very physically demanding. We also needed to get the truck on top of the mountain and remember how we simply could not do that because it was simply impossible

Abderahman:  Yes, I remember and how we ended up having to take down all the long steel pillars out of the truck and try to do that by walking to soon discover we really could not do that either; extremely heavy, hot and hard… and finally we had to ask for the donkeys from the villages to let us use them but they insisted that they have to be with their own donkeys for one, and second, most of the international volunteers disliked the idea

Hussein Soussan, Fog-Water Manager-Assisstant

Hussein:  It was very hard at this time, but we did succeed after a week of non-stop work to deliver all the material to the mountain and it is only after that we started building.  That too was difficult, the rocks were too hard to break and we could not make the necessary holes for the anchors. One time, the contractor said he wanted to use dynamite and the managing team refused. We were, though, able after a lot of physical work to finish the holes. 

Abderahman:  Each one of the program that we host at Dar Si Hmad comes with its set of challenges, but what is important is that we always talk and find the solution as a team.

Hussein:  I’ve worked in many places before joining Dar Si Hmad and this is what I always like and treasure in this experience: the ability to problem-solve together, for all of us to come together and consider what the best solution to a given problem is and then work towards adopting the solution. 

From the Logbook: Employees of DSH Tell their Stories, Mohammad Hamou-Ali, Fog-Water Project Assistant

Free interpretation based on Mohammad’s interview

In December 2018, I received a frantic phone call from Timtda village that water was leaking from a buried pipe.  I quickly made it to the house in question and, indeed, the entry to the house was getting muddier because the buried pipe seems to be leaking.  The grandfather comes out of the house in a state of panic and seemingly quite distraught saying that “my grandson was playing here and cut off the pipe”.  This seemed odd, how can a 7 year old, even playing rough reach a pipe buried at 60 cm deep?  What did he play with to cause such a damage?  This story somehow was unlikely but given the venerable age of this man, I could not ask any further and I had to fix the water leak as this affects water availability to the remaining households.

As I was digging, the grandfather went inside to make tea.  The child stayed behind and I started asking him about the game he was playing, at which he whispered how it was his grandfather who broke the pipe when trying to install bricks at the entrance of the house. The grandfather was apparently extremely worried that he would be the cause for water shortage in the entire village. It seemed much more befitting to say it was the doing of a child, that is someone with no maturity, not knowing there are consequences to actions and thus can be easily pardoned. That it was an accident did not seem to make sense to the grandfather who thought that just because he caused the leak, he was responsible and may have not only to pay extra-money for the water, but may have to face his fellow-villagers.  Understanding this, I continued working and fixed the leak, I also went in and had tea but never told the grandfather I knew. What was more important is that no water would continue to leak and that, the grandfather and I shared profoundly, no water-waste because we both know how valuable such a substance is. 

Some Playing time after a very hard day of work on the Fog-Water Project