10. LES GENS DE BOKIAT

I am on probation, I cannot leave the city or the country. I cannot go back home, and I don’t know what the police are brewing behind my back. They no longer tell me anything. Patients keep waiting for me every morning on the street, but I don’t dare to cure them. Tahara cannot let anyone inside, because the health inspectors are in ambush ready to close her hotel.

I secretly continue to give some remedies to the people on the street. How can I refuse to help a mother who is pained for her child?

I prepare them in my room. During the police inspection, they forgot to confiscate some bottles of essential oils that I immediately hid .but I no longer have needles and for the majority of patients I cannot do much, especially for the elderly who are disabled by rheumatism.

So, I started again to search for a site for the well. I decided to broaden the scope of my search to the villages around Timbuktu. I was advised about a camp of Arab resident Tuaregs, who do not work or farm. They live from NGO fundings. Their need for water is great, but it is not a real village. Families live in huts hundred meters apart from each other because Tuaregs don’t like to live close to each other. I would like to find a place where the well would be more useful.

Then, I visited the village of Bokiat.

All the people of the village subsist on endeavors related to horticulture. Even the young Imam gardens the land instead of living from Religion.

Their working conditions are terrible, they have a hand pump (to pump water) that is far from the farmlands. They must pump the water manually and, after this effort, they have to carry it for 200 meters to the farmlands.

The water pump of the gardens

40 Litres of water, the whole day. They even have holes in the ground, it is even more difficult. They carry up these 40 litres of water up stairs that are some 12 meters in height.

The impact on their body is significant. Their physical condition is pitiful, their knees are worn out and their back are battered.… When I examine their back to cure them, wherever I touch, they jump from the pain. They hurt from their neck to their lower backs. I realize that God did not create the human body to carry 40 kg all day, every day. I start to think about our Italian farmers who complain incessantly of the hardness of their work, and yet they only need to open a tap.

I think Bokiat is a possible site to make a well and put up a windmill. The necessary conditions that I was looking for are all here. It is a village where people actually work, instead of living from foreign subsidies. The water is insufficient, even with the village’s small solar pump and hand pump. There is also wind for the wind power pump. In addition, the ideal site is located next to the road. For this reason, placing a windmill to pump water from the soil will be visible to many people, and it will hopefully inspire emulators.

I met with the villagers, and they were excited to have a new source of water.

I asked them to show me where would be the best location for the well, and they showed me the site.

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