5. THE ORCHARDS OF TIMBUKTU

The canal of Khaddafi

Since the suburbs of the city are not the right place for my project, I thought of the gardens that supply the city with fresh vegetables. Water is a big problem for the population of gardeners, even if it is far from being the only one. These gardens are also located on the outskirts.

Most are located along the Gaddafi Canal where the water is closest to the surface. Unfortunately, as the land occupied by gardeners is divided up and sold by the municipality, the gardens end up moving further and further into arid and waterless land. NGOs provide them with wells to pump water, always by hand, and every time they have to start from scratch. They have to set out to reclaim uncultivated lands on a fixed-term basis and build wells, perhaps borrowing from foreign “aid”.

They work hard for years, clearing the land, watering it and planting trees, until one day the politicians of Timbuktu sell the plots of land that they have reclaimed from the desert sands and assign them a new plot in the desert.

On the other hand, there are no alternatives. The city grows and the gardens cannot fit between houses. Their fate is to be out of town. This logic does not make the fate of poor gardeners any less sad.

The life of a gardener in the desert is very difficult, because vegetables need water constantly and not small quantities.

The water is pulled by hand from the wells with fatigue, the gardeners have no money for either pumps or diesel. On each journey from the well to the garden they fill and carry two 20-liter drums, sometimes 200 meters away. They pour the water into the small cultivated squares. One container for each square. Then they start again, all day, every day, all through their lives.

They are so busy with the cultivation that they cannot go to the market to sell their crop, they have to sell it at a lower price to market traders, losing a significant portion of the selling price.

When I treated these people with aromatherapy and acupuncture, I realized that humans were not created to carry 40 kilos of weight all day long. Their backbones are all broken, everywhere you press it hurts, just touching their spine to locate a vertebra makes them jump from the pain.. But they can never stop . In the desert, one single day without water and the vegetables will die.

When the dry season arrives, the water level drops and cultivation becomes even more difficult, as more effort is needed to pull the water up from a deeper level.

How wonderful would be a well and a wind pump giving free and abundant water without effort!

After visiting several gardens and talking to gardeners I realized that giving them a well and a wind pump doesn’t make much sense in the long run as they will soon be kicked out of their gardens to make way for homes.

I invited the head of the canal gardeners to the hotel, and I gave them seeds of the best Italian vegetables, I hope this will improve their lives a little.

I have to search somewhere else for a place to install the wind pump. Further away from the city, in the surrounding villages, but in the meantime something is happening in Timbuktu…

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