Harvesting "blue gold"

Two months after the beginning of a generous monsoon season in the “Rain, Forest and People” project area, the APAF Senegal team visited households which benefited from the construction of a Calabash in June 2020. The purpose of the visit was to check the quality of the new constructions and to measure the water level in the tanks.

The team was very much welcome by the selected families. The latter were fully satisfied and happy with their new rainwater harvesting system. According to testimonies collected from the year 2019 beneficiaries, this device enables access to free drinking water for up to five months after the end of the rainy season (for a household of approximately fifteen members).

Once the tanks are empty of this "blue gold", many people fill them through the local water supply system, in anticipation of the numerous water cuts occurring during the dry season on the supply grid managed by the local water supply operating company (SEOH). Once the calabash is full, it contains up to 5,000L of clean water! This is a significant amount of water, considering the various daily usage of this vital resource: water consumption for drinking and meal preparation, for bathing, ablutions, laundry, house cleaning, watering of household breeding, etc.

Usually the lack of clean water is one of the main causes of waterborne diseases, as well as limited hygiene, especially among the vulnerable . Therefore, it is paramount to secure access to clean water for vulnerable populations in this worrying pandemic context.