17. THE LANDS OF BOKIAT

The land in Bokiat does not belong to the people who live there. Everything belongs to the municipality and will remain so until the municipality divides the land into plots to sell to its inhabitants.

In the meantime, they are only the occupants, and not the owners, even though they have lived here for generations. Everything belongs to the municipality because they do not have a written title that attests to their owning it.

That is the problem.

This seems to be profoundly unfair to me. These poor people tell me that they have been trying for years to get titles to their houses, through an interminable bureaucratic process, without success, amidst promises from politicians and money spent in vain.

My plan is simple. Make a well, mount the wind pump on it and build a reservoir for the village with about ten big taps.

The water overflowing will be canalised to another tank in the nearby gardens. Garden pipes will be used to water the plants like in the American garden. The farmers will stop carrying 40 kilos of water all day.

The whole thing should be enclosed by a wall, so that children cannot climb the wind turbine masts, which are 12 metres high, and also to protect the well and the tank. The taps, however, will remain outside the fence.

I will put my small 12-volt electric wind turbine on the pylons, which will allow people to charge their phones and also their radio batteries, without having to go into town to do so.

I will put my solar water heater on the roof of the reservoir, so that the people can save a lot of money on the coal they use, and heat their kitchen and shower water. It will be an economic gain for them and an ecological gain for everyone.

I will also have to build a small house for the caretaker and provide an annual budget for his salary, for the maintenance of the wind turbines, the well and the reservoir and also the house after each rainy season.

This is the price for senseless wealth in the desert, water in abundance and without effort.

It is clear that I am not going to build all this on public land. So I have to ask the municipality to buy the land where the people told me to make the well. My next move is now to pay a visit to the mayor and ask him to sell me the land.

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