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April 27, 2005

Queuing

Queuing is not an activity typically associated with Africa, but at tap 28 in Djibo the barrels and buckets are lined up in strict single file, shimmering beneath the fierce Sahara sun. The tap itself is set into a pillar on a wide concrete slab, and is secured with a large white-hot padlock. In the shade of the acacia tree where Seydou and I are sitting the temperature is 45 degrees centigrade.

At exactly 3 o'clock Mariama Diallo comes and stands by her bucket, the first one in the queue. The other water-seekers arrive in twos and threes and arrange themselves behind her, laughing and bickering. Most of them are teenage girls with town attitude and town hairdos. Some have dyed their hair with henna and tied it in a big red pony tail, others have used lengths of plastic wire to make their braids stand out from the head in a halo of exclamation marks.

Mariama is fifteen or sixteen years old and her T-shirt bears the enigmatic motto, 'Keep him happy with MAGI cubes'. In spite of the heat, all these girls and women are wearing ankle-length patterned skirts. Modesty has long been a part of Fulani culture, but it is has recently been enforced by legislation forbidding the wearing of short skirts. The penalty for flouting the dress code is to sweep a long street with a short broom. Tourists beware.

Perched on an acacia branch above me, a weaver bird watches the girls with his beak wide open in a comic expression of astonishment. This is the masked weaver bird, a male just coming into his rainy-season plumage, his black Lone Ranger-like mask already conspicuous on his bright yellow face. In truth he is not surprised - he holds his mouth open like that to try and keep cool.

At this time of year, keeping cool is a prime concern of all Djibo residents, feathered or not. Scorpions emerge from the baking sand and seek out cooler places, idling under the lip of a clay water pot or in the toe of a discarded plimsoll. The donkeys under the acacia tree stand entwined in pairs, resting their heads on each others necks; in this energy-sapping heat even supporting the weight of one's own head is a chore. Indeed, between midday and four o'clock everything one does is an exertion - standing upright, blinking, swallowing saliva, sighing, tutting, murmuring 'Naange na haadi katin' (Turned out sunny again), even breathing in and out. Let's face it, the north of Burkina Faso in May is profoundly unsuited to human existence, and even the locals never get used to it. Black skin is advantageous, of course, but even better would be a skin that you could unzip and climb out of.

At ten past three Seydou 'Jom Ndiyam' ambles up to the tap. He peers at the girls through the gap in his voluminous turban, eyes narrowed to slits (open your eyes too wide in this sun and you begin to smell your retinas sizzling). Seydou attaches a short hose to the spout, sprawls on the concrete slab, throws an arm over his eyes and falls asleep. Out in the bush, Jom Ndiyam (literally 'water lord') denotes a djinn living in a river or lake who must be placated in order to gain access to the water; here in town the term refers to Seydou and his colleagues at the water-board. The urban water lord is altogether more benign and less mysterious than his rural spirit counterpart.

Eleven past three and Mariama steps up to the tap and turns it; liquid life gushes into her plastic bucket. The weaver hops onto a lower branch and cocks its head to one side, while the girls in the queue loll and chatter and squabble over their places, awaiting their turns impatiently. For those at the back of the line, it will be several hours before they reach the tap; many of them will have to return home in the dark.

Mariama places a 5 CFA coin on the concrete slab next to the water lord. He still looks fast asleep but she knows better than to test his vigilance by not paying. She lifts the bucket to chest height, and someone helps her to manoeuvre it onto her head. It is full to the brim but not a drop is spilled. She moves off, hips swaying, one hand raised to steady the rim of the bucket.

When she gets home, Mariama will pour this water into the round clay pot which sits in a dark corner of her hut. These pots are magnificent - the wet clay retains the water and cools it down to well below hut-temperature - drinking a beaker of this cool water on a hot day is a real pleasure. Mariama's pot is hardly of Ali Baba proportions but it is certainly big enough to keep her and her husband and children going for a while. If they drink sparingly, she will not have to return to tap 28 until tomorrow afternoon. And if she is there by midday, her bucket might once again be first in the queue.

Posted by sahelsteve at April 27, 2005 08:31 AM