DEVELOPMENT-SENEGAL: Water Still A Problem In Dakar

DEVELOPMENT-SENEGAL: Water Still A Problem In Dakar
By Koffigan E. Adigbli

DAKAR, Aug 4 (IPS) - Dakar's suburban communities still deal with irregular access to water. The problem is especially pressing for neighborhoods such as Yeumbeul, Diamaguene et Cambérène.

Many households in those neighborhoods lack access to potable water. However, the Sénégalaise des eaux (SDE), a water-distribution corporation, guarantees that water problems will become a distant memory once technical issues have been resolved.

In Diamaguene, a suburb not far from National Highway 1, few homes are connected to the SDE. Residents have to travel with jugs to other neighbourhoods for drinking water.

Astou Diagne brims with rage. "Politians came around with well-oiled speeches on local issues, especially concerning water. But despite requests put in to the SDE we still don't have any water lines," she complains.

There's only one water fountain in the neighborhood, managed by Malick Ndiaye. Women start lining up first thing in the morning to increase their chances of getting water. Fatou Diop Gueye, a mother from the neighborhood told IPS: "The early birds are luckiest, they can get water for the whole day."

Ndiaye doesn't it find it much easier, since he rarely gets a full night's sleep. "I get disturbed all hours of the night by women who want me to check the water faucet, and since at midday the water gets cut off they have to turn to the wells for water for cooking."

Adama Niang, a law student at Dakar's Université Cheikh Anta Diop, knows all too well how dangerous is could be to drink well water. "Well water should be treated, but there's no alternative -– we don't even have faucets and plumbing in the house."

Residents are in such a bind they can't even complain about the price of water. Malick sells 5 litres of water for 25 CFA francs (approximately 6 cents), 50 litres for 150 CFA (36 cents). It is slightly more expensive than in other neighborhoods.

In Cambérène, a neighborhood 10 kilometres from the city centre, families have to deal with drainage and pipes laid about randomly -– often dangerously close to toilets and ablution facilities. Adama Dièye, an SDE technician, told IPS this not only violates standards, it poses a great risk of contamination if ever any pipes burst.

This is a suburb with very narrow streets, because it was not mapped out by the municipal topographical office. Tap water sometimes has a reddish color. According to Marthe Ndong, a local teacher, service is irregular and the water has an aftertaste. "The water here is something special. Sometimes you turn on the faucet and nothing comes, or its red and tastes really bad. But we deal with it," she told IPS jokingly.

However, the administration at the Sénégalaise des eaux insists that water access problems will soon be resolved. SDE's director, Mamadou Dia, notes that the increased unreliability was due in large part to the Société nationale des eaux du Sénégal (SONES) having replaced a large water conduit originally built in 1958. The initiative had two goals: improve both the quality and quanity of water available, especially in the suburbs.

Dia also added that Dakar needs 295,000 cubic meters and utilities provide 300,000. Hence, the slightest technical difficulty –- such as a power outage -– can cause disruptions in service.

Cheik Fall, director of SONES, announced that new water treament stations are being built and should be operational by December. The SONES is a public utility charged with planning and investing in water infrastructure.

Fall laid to rest any fears of price hikes. "There have been increases in production costs since 2003, yet the price of water has stayed the same," he pointed out. The reddish colour of suburban water by no means suggests unsanitary conditions. The water is verified by laboratories such as the Institut Pasteur and more than 90 percent of the water tested meets the standard."

According to SDE archives, the average Senegalese citizen receives 35 litres of water daily, and not all users pay the same price. If the average cost of water is 419 FCFA (1 dollar) a cubic metre, it costs gardeners 268 FCFA (64 cents) for farmers, households 372 FCFA (89 cents) and commercial users 639 FCFA ($1.5 dollars).

Water distribution also relies on electricity to run the pumps; but with increasing blackouts, lineups at neighborhood wells will probably grow longer, as all seek this precious commodity.

Chapin Living Waters-Featured Ministry

Recently, I met a represenative for Chapin Living Waters. I had heard about this simple drip irrigation from Echo and Equip International.
They sent me atrial bucket kit at no charge. I set it up in my own garden to see how this works. I was very pleased at the simplicity and the final result . I'm watering a row of beans and some tomato plants. I will test it out all summer. Now, i have communicated to them that I would like to take two kits with me to Senegal and try to implement them in a small community garden in a rural village.
On their website they say:

"Chapin Living Waters exists to help poor people in third world countries grow vegetables when there is insufficient rain. We offer simple, sustainable technologies like drip irrigation with the use of "Bucket Kits" for subsistence farming, bringing hope to the poorest people in over 150 countries and the opportunity to solve their own problems."

I hope to post a few pics of the bucket kit installed in Senegal. But,
I am going to introduce it to my friends in the village and let them determine if they want to try it...if so...i will be glad to share my knowledge of how this works.
Stay tuned...

Faith Working Through Love in Senegal

Mt Rachel Baptist church in Dalton, Georgia has maybe 450 people in attendance any given Sunday. They have fallen in love with three villages in Senegal outside of Kaffrine among the Fulbe people. Mt Rachel came to know about these folks through their former pastor Tom Smith after he became a missionary with the IMB (International Missions Board of the Southern Baptists). Tom took current pastor Marty Greene to Kaffrine on a vision trip in 2007 and they visited some villages which have had only minimal contact with Christians. Senegal is a country that is 95% Muslim and many of the rural areas have no exposure to God's Word.

Twice a year Brother Marty takes teams there and they're shooting for four to five times a year. These teams do seventeen weeks of preparation for the trips, 1.5 hours/week on Sundays. They read "All The Prophets Have Spoken" and do language work so that they can greet and visit when they arrive. They do Bible study to learn stories to share (for the June trip they are studying John). For some team members, this is the first time they have studied the Bible intensely, for a reason. Most everyone who's gone on the trips, when asked why they want to go reply, "Because I want a new experience with Christ." That's what they've heard from others who have gone. They complete a 6 week training on missions from the IMB and do some training on safe travel solutions in dealing with unfriendly government officials. They were detained one year and found they needed that training. They run background checks on team members, those typical for people who work with children. This was suggested by the IMB after some field experiences the IMB had with other short term teams. Teams average about nine people.

When Brother Marty was on his vision trip with Tom, as he prayed about what to do, he felt led of God to use a strategy where they do not bring material gifts or projects. "We don't want them coming to us hoping to get something tangible." Brother Marty says, "This doesn't mean other strategies are invalid. This is just what God led us to do." They did do one project with a dental hygienist and donation of toothbrushes, and another project where they gave seeds and some soccer balls, but in the case of the seeds they gave based on the receivers agreeing to give seed back into a seed bank at harvest.

In place of major projects, Mt Rachel's teams visit with people and ask them for prayer requests. They come back to Georgia, give the prayer requests to their whole church when they come back and pray. When they return six months later, they go back and find out how God has answered. On one early trip they heard, "We need water." They replied, "We're just men, there's really nothing we can do about that, but we will pray to our God." Within a year the town had water. The team from Mt Rachel sits down with people and listens to their stories, tell their own testimonies, and pray for people in person. They tell Bible stories. The villagers love to share stories with them. During their last trip they worked in fields of the village pulling weeds.

Mt Rachel has found that this work in Senegal has had a big impact on their church as they have seen their own prayers answered. In Senegal, it's common to receive a new name from your friends in a village. Folks at Mt Rachel greet each other with those names on Sunday. Brother Marty has become accustomed to an occasional cry of "Alhamdoulilaye!" in the midst of the more common "Amen" and "Halleluyah" during his sermons. Many team members have launched into outreach in their local community on return to America. Missions abroad, outreach at home - think globally, act locally. They are struck by the issue of lostness and have launched VBS programs in the schools out in their community. The short term trips have been spiritually challenging and most have grown in response to the challenge. Mt Rachel just erupted when Bass Ba and Kanta Soh got saved. Persecuted believer Mayacine has really had an impact on the people from Mt Rachel.

Mt Rachel's goal is to encourage nationals who have accepted Christ to reach their own countrymen, and they are helping one young Senegal man now who is using literacy training in the villages to teach the Bible.


After one of their trips, the local marabout (spiritual leader in folk Islam) came and told the village not to let Mt Rachel come back.



The townspeople refused the marabout.






by Rick Randall, Broomfield, Colorado

Business as Mission

THE BUSINESS AS MISSION MANIFESTO



The Lausanne (LCWE) 2004 Forum Business as Mission Issue Group worked for a year, addressing issues relating to God’s purposes for work and business, the role of business people in church and missions, the needs of the world and the potential response of business. The group consisted of more than 70 people from all continents. Most came from a business background but there were also church and mission leaders, educators, theologians, lawyers and researchers. The collaboration process included 60 papers, 25 cases studies, several national and regional Business as Mission consultations and email-based discussions, culminating in a week of face to face dialogue and work. These are some of our observations.



Affirmations



* We believe that God has created all men & women in His image with the ability to be creative, creating good things for themselves and for others - this includes business.
* We believe in following in the footsteps of Jesus, who constantly and consistently met the needs of the people he encountered, thus demonstrating the love of God and the rule of His kingdom.
* We believe that the Holy Spirit empowers all members of the Body of Christ to serve, to meet the real spiritual and physical needs of others, demonstrating the kingdom of God.
* We believe that God has called and equipped business people to make a Kingdom difference in and through their businesses.
* We believe that the Gospel has the power to transform individuals, communities and societies. Christians in business should therefore be a part of this holistic transformation through business.
* We recognise the fact that poverty and unemployment are often rampant in areas where the name of Jesus is rarely heard and understood.
* We recognise both the dire need for and the importance of business development. However it is more than just business per se. Business as Mission is about business with a Kingdom of God perspective, purpose and impact.
* We recognise that there is a need for job creation and for multiplication of businesses all over the world, aiming at the quadruple bottom line: spiritual, economical, social and environmental transformation.
* We recognise the fact that the church has a huge and largely untapped resource in the Christian business community to meet needs of the world – in and through business - and bring glory to God in the market place and beyond.

Recommendations

We call upon the Church world wide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission and release business people and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as business people in the world – among all peoples and to the ends of the earth.

We call upon business people globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world's most pressing spiritual and physical need through Business as Mission.



Conclusion

The real bottom line of Business as Mission is AMDG - ad maiorem Dei gloriam – for the greater glory of God


Business as Mission Issue Group - October 2004
Convening Team: Mats Tunehag Wayne McGee Josie Plummmer



_____________________________________


THE BUSINESS AS MISSION
-
Occasional Paper No.59

Produced by the Issue Group on this topic at the 2004 Forum
hosted by the
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization
In Pattaya, Thailand, September 29 to October 5, 2004



“A New Vision, a New Heart and
a Renewed Call”



This Occasional Paper was prepared by the whole Issue Group and

Edited by Mats Tunehag, Wayne McGee and Josie Plummer

_____________

In a Senegalese Slum, a Building Material Both Primitive and Perilous

May 3, 2009
In a Senegalese Slum, a Building Material Both Primitive and Perilous
By ADAM NOSSITER

GUÉDIAWAYE, Senegal — Aba Dione, 7 years old, met his end six weeks ago in the trash-filled corner of an abandoned dwelling here, as good a place to play as any, it seemed, when the other options were garbage and more garbage.

Except that in this case the thick carpet of crushed plastic bottles and bags, clothing shreds, old flip-flops and muck was deceptively floating on several feet of water; unknowing, Aba fell in and drowned.

Garbage might have seemed safe to the boy because it is everywhere in this forlorn, dun-colored slum abutting Dakar, the capital. Delivered on order for a few pennies a load by rickety horse-drawn carts speeding through the dirt streets of the Médina Gounass neighborhood of Guédiawaye, it is as pervasive as the hot midday sun in which it bakes. The people use it to shore up their flood-prone houses and streets in this low-lying area near the Atlantic coast; they have no choice.

Garbage, packed down tight and then covered with a thin layer of sand, is used to raise the floors of houses that flood regularly in the brief but intense summer rainy season, and it is packed into the dusty streets that otherwise become canals. The water lingers for months in the low-lying terrain of this bone-dry country.

Garbage is a surrogate building material, a critical filler to deal with the stagnant water — cheap, instantly accessible and never diminishing. The plastic-laden spillover from these foul-smelling deliveries pokes up through the sandy lots, covers the ground between the crumbling cinder-block houses, becomes grazing ground for goats, playground for barefoot, runny-nosed children and breeding ground for swarms of flies. Disease flourishes here, aid groups say: cholera, malaria, yellow fever and tuberculosis.

Ten miles away in the capital, piles of refuse are merely an intermittent feature of the dusty cityscape. Garbage in Dakar is dumped under tattered signs warning “Dump no garbage,” and trash fires burn all night in neighborhoods by the beaches. Torn black plastic bags festoon Dakar’s shrubbery, trees and fences in a metropolis of often do-it-yourself services.

But here in Médina Gounass, the unrestrained garbage tide finds its apotheosis.

“It’s not the best way,” said Pape Yabandao, a mason who was working on the walls of a house here. “But what can we do?”

Garbage had been an indispensable building tool for him, too.

Why?

“I don’t have the means,” he said. “If you don’t have other solutions, and if everybody here uses garbage, you have to, too. There’s water in the house and in the rooms.” As he spoke, a garbage cart charged up a street in the distance to deliver its load.

“It’s a problem of money,” said Zale Fall, standing nearby. “The people who live here don’t have the means for sand or rubble, so they are obliged to call the cart-drivers for filler. It’s for our children’s sake. Better to have illnesses than death.”

Ami Camara, Aba’s mother, was not the first to lose a child to the hidden bogs of Médina Gounass. Hanging her head in the courtyard of a four-room shanty where she and 15 family members live, she quietly recalled bathing her young son after lunch and sending him out to play. Then his friends found his shoes, and his body.

“Everything that happens is the will of God,” said the boy’s grandmother, Yaline Ndaye. “We can’t do anything about it.” She turned away.

Mrs. Camara’s four remaining children were playing in a corner. Almost cater-corner was another darkened, abandoned house filled with water and garbage, nearly to the roof.

Local officials accept this near-worst-of-several-worlds with almost the same fatalism. “We wanted to stop this, because it is risky,” said Amadou Gaye, deputy mayor for Médina Gounass, which has a population of around 85,000. “But the people are too poor. If these areas are filled in, there’s less risk.”

One risk quickly replaces another, however. Living in garbage — eating, washing and playing in it — “has harmful consequences,” said Abdou Karim Fall, of the antipoverty development agency Enda — Tiers Monde, which is based in Dakar.

“All the diseases come with it,” he said, “and they are so far advanced in these neighborhoods. Children are the most exposed. People live all year long right up against stagnant water and garbage.”

In an upside-down world where garbage is sought for and dumped among homes, not removed, “people have no alternatives; they are left to themselves; they can only count on themselves,” said Joseph Gaï Ramaka, a leading Senegalese filmmaker, who made a documentary about an incomplete government effort, the Plan Jaxaay, to build modern housing for people in vulnerable neighborhoods.

“These are people who are proud of being clean,” said Mr. Ramaka, who now lives in New Orleans. “When they have to buy garbage, it’s because they don’t have any choice. The garbage, at least, allows them to sleep with their feet out of the water, and in their own house.”

The practice has persisted for years. Médina Gounass was first settled in the early 1960s by rural people flocking to the city’s outskirts, people who were not “educated in the culture of trash disposal,” said Fatou Sarr, a socioanthropologist at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, who has written about the area. Blessed by a marabout, or Muslim holy man, the territory attracted more settlers in the 1970s during a period of great national drought, when the problems of flooding seemed nonexistent.

Over the years, layer after layer of garbage was added, sometimes as much as 13 feet, to keep floors above the floodwaters, said Mansour Ndoye, an official at the Ministry of Urban Affairs, Lodging and Construction who helps run the Plan Jaxaay.

“These are people of extremely low income,” he said. “They put down garbage, and they built on top of it. And they are still putting down garbage, in order to live.”

Back in Médina Gounass, Mr. Gaye, the deputy mayor, poked one of the deceptive bogs with his foot. “You see, it’s not filled in here,” he said. “If someone fell in, it would be all over for them.”


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Ministry Focus

Recently I visited a ministry located in the foothills of the blue ridge mountains. This ministry, Equip International, is a unique ministry. It's nestled on about twenty acres.
It has numerous cabins for 'missionaries in training' and other people interested in training courses they have to offer.Training courses include: Community Health evangelism,Water technologies,food production, building energy efficient shelters and an intense two week training on medicine /medical training. During a week stay, people in training will interact with poeple that have similar passions.

On Equips website they write-
Equip seeks Christians who have chosen to work in service-oriented vocations out of a desire to help others, men and women with a unique sensitivity to their responsibility for sharing Christ with their neighbors through actions as well as words. But Equip is selective; we want Christians who choose to apply their efforts through the local church in its ministry to the community rather than just work in the community apart from the church."
I was able to observe the end of a hygiene training class and the beginning of the water drilling class. I seen the class's bio sand filter that was constructed by the team. They instructed me on how the bio sand filter works and the importance of the 'right flow per minute' to get the best protection for bacteria and viruses. In fact, if this filter is set up right, it can be 99% effective.

The second week, we gathered on Sunday night to listen to a local hydrologist who has worked in developing countries drilling for clean water.
Then the following day, the class wastes no time in beginning drilling with the LS-100 drill. This unique drill is manufactured by Little Beaver.
If you are interested in getting any training for these courses, go to website for info.

"It's all about relationships"

Recently friends revisited a village we have been building a relationship with for over five years. It's amazing how relationships continue to grow and new ones begin. Though we cross cultures...we are still connected by God's grace...here's a note from my friend regarding one relationship.



In so many ways this was a very sweet trip. The relationships we have with our friends in the village grow deeper every year. While we care deeply about the humanitarian projects that could improve our friends' physical lives, these trips are really about people and relationships.

We continued with a relationship from last years trip.He is a 25 year old who is apprenticing to become a bus driver. He has a girl that he is engaged to but he won't be able to marry her until he is able to drive. He rides in the back of the mini-bus we use to travel while we're in the country and unloads the baggage with the hope of someday being allowed to drive the bus.

"A"is an incredibly sweet guy. We made every effort to make "A" part of our "family" during the week in Senegal. We invited him to join us in just about everything we did from our morning devotionals to meals to our dance parties in the village. We wanted him to know that he was loved.

On our last night in the country, just hours before we left, we learned that "A' is not paid for his apprenticeship. He will occasionally get a tip from the owner of the bus but that doesn't amount to much of anything. We all chipped in and came up with a "tip" and gave it to him shortly before we all left for the airport.

As we were riding to the airport, "A' was sitting in his customary place at the back of the bus. His head was buried in his arms. He was sobbing. When we arrived at the airport we all got out, 'A' gave us our baggage and we all stepped forward to give him a hug. As we did so, he whispered to each of us in English - "Thank you. I love you."

It doesn't take much to bridge the gap between Black and White, Muslim and Christian, African and American. Just a little love.

Congo Initiative new video