Ivory Coast city struggles with crippling drought
BOUAKE: “All that comes out of the tap right now is cockroaches,” said Honorine Babalou, a 20yearold textile worker.
In Bouake, Ivory Coast’s second largest city, the regular water supply trickled to a halt three months ago – a shortage officials blame on a drought caused by global warming.
Like many other residents, Babalou balanced on her head a giant basin of fresh water drawn from a tanker truck that had trundled down sunscorched clay tracks to make a delivery in a poor part of town.
The city of about 800,000 people has long depended on the nearby Loka dam for around threequarters of its water supply. But the lake behind the dam has shrivelled to almost nothing.
“This is climate change. It rains a lot less often and the sun has been stronger for several years,” said Yeboue Ouffoue, 85, chief of the small village of AngouaYaokro, near the site where the dam was built in the late 1970s.
“Here we live off agriculture, but with the water shortage we can no longer plant the way we want. Income has dropped,” he added.
“We’ve entered a time of water rationing in Bouake,” said Mayor Nicolas Djibo, who also blames climate change, along with people who diverted waterways to exploit sand quarries in the region.
Bouake is known as a centre for “white gold”, referring to the once lucrative cotton industry, and now “grey gold”, the thriving cashew nut business.
The city formerly served as headquarters for rebels who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power in 2011 after a disputed election and violent political crisis.
Today, faced with an existential threat, the city is looking at a scheme to pipe in supplies from Lake Kossou, about 100km away. This operation would take two
€ years and cost an estimated 45mil (RM209mil), said Djibo.
Tanker trucks now provide emergency supplies after attempts to drill into groundwater faltered.
Authorities sank wells in several parts of Bouake, but the water pumped fell far short of basic requirements.
“We’re greeted like the Messiah or something like that,” joked driver Mohamed Lamine Diakite, whose truck carries 10,000 litres of water.
In the Sokoura district, women set out hundreds of basins and buckets on the ground, waiting for the water distribution under a broiling sun. There are few men around and women carry away the heavy load for the family.
“We cannot live like this,” said Mariam Kone, a trading woman with three children who also cares for her sick mother.
“You can go two or three days without washing yourself. Before this, we drank water straight from the tap. Today, we adults hold back but the children don’t understand.
“We have to pay for mineral water, but the price has risen. We’ll go broke,” Kone said.
Others are angry at officialdom, accusing it of mismanaging both the problem and the solution.
“They tell us ‘It’s emergency measures’ or ‘Wait a couple of years’, but the dam didn’t go dry from one day to the next.
“The government, the authorities, the (water distribution company) Sodeci – somebody handled this really badly,” one resident said.
Awaiting her turn in line, Sabine Kone yelled at a neighbour: “Hands off my water!”
Explaining her sharp words, the young student said: “Water is like treasure now. And what’s more, she wanted to fill her dirty flask from my bowl. This water we get is drinking water. She was going to make it dirty. Water is life!”