namibia

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EphemeralWaters

Water, water, where?

An article by Vicki Masters

Each year, the world windsurfing community focuses its attention on the African country of Namibia, home of the annual international speedsailing competition held at Walvis Bay. We however, want to focus this article on water... the water that we drink.

Namibia lies along the southwestern coast of Africa, and is bordered by Angola in the north, Zambia and Zimbabwe in the northeast, Botswana to the east, South Africa in the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west.

Namibia’s climate is characterized by hot and dry conditions and sparse and erratic rainfall. Within Africa the Namibian climate is second in aridity only to the Sahara Desert. Over 92 percent of the country is classified as arid or semi arid.

Namibia has no perennial rivers running through its borders. It is highly dependent on its neighboring countries for securing its water supply, particularly South Africa and Angola due to the large portion of the country’s population living near or along the banks of the rivers shared with these countries. It is estimated that shared rivers currently provide around one third of the water consumed in Namibia.

A number of institutions are responsible for different aspects of water supply, management and use, including government departments, municipalities, community-based Water Point Committees, private organizations, and individuals.

Windhoek, the capital of the Republic of Namibia, is located in an extremely arid region. Since 1969, Windhoek has been the first city in the world to treat sewerage to potable standards for direct recycling into the city water distribution system.

Given the water scarcity of Namibia, it is natural that there is competition for water, which poses a dilemma for this country. In addition to the needs of the population, farmers, bushmen and animals all have their own requirements.

Attempts to divert or dam waters within its borders have met with resistance from neighboring countries, locals and environmental groups.

Several years ago, Botswana raised a public outcry when Namibia announced emergency plans to divert water from the Okavango River to relieve drought conditions. Botswana was concerned that the diversion could hurt its number-one tourist attraction, the Okavango Delta, which draws top-dollar travelers to see some of the best wildlife viewing in Africa.

The potential for conflict in many regions is so serious that the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development dedicated that years’ annual meeting to discussions of how to avoid a freshwater crisis. Namibia, Botswana and Angola ended up participating in UN-brokered talks on planning for future water needs in the Okavango Basin - and the Berkeley-based International Rivers Network is trying to come up with alternative water solutions for Namibia.

The Epupa Dam project on the Kunene River has been stalled for years, and now Namibia is exploring better alternatives to meet its energy needs.

So what does this mean to a person visiting Namibia? We had the chance to ask Vicki Masters this very question. Vicki is visiting the country for a year, volunteering her time with the VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) helping to carry out activities to tackle poverty more effectively and efficiently. This is what she had to report...

When I arrive in my house in Namibia there is a map on the wall entitled ‘The Ephemeral River Catchments of Namibia’. How, I wonder, can a river be ephemeral? I come from Scotland where rivers are noisy, active, full and anything but ‘a markedly short lived thing’, as the dictionary definition would have it.

Then, as I move around the country, I begin to notice the number of bridges spanning dry, dusty, scrub filled channels. I also can’t avoid registering that at each end of my dirt street there are deep culverts which I edge my non 4wd vehicle through with trepidation, tenderly nursing its sump. And I must never get enthusiastic when reversing the car out of my driveway or I may end up toppling it into the 5 foot deep ditch on the other side of the road.

I have come at the end of summer and we have a few heavy rainstorms.

On those days the ditches and culverts fill with water and, having walked to work, I arrive with mud clogged feet, very wet sand being of a remarkably sticky consistency and heavy, once it has stuck. Now we are in winter and it is months since it last rained; dust hangs on the air and creeps everywhere. The concept of an ephemeral river becomes more tangible.

The legend on the map explains that an ephemeral river is a river which rarely flows. In Namibia this means only during the summer rainy season and then, only after heavy rains. The map comments that these rivers usually flow for only a week. One week out of a possible 52 weeks. I study the map more closely and, as far as I can see, Namibia has only ephemeral rivers. And yet there is water flowing from my tap whenever I want it.

I move my table out of the way to get a closer look at the map and all is explained by Namibia’s borders. To the north and south they are delineated by the wide, slow moving rivers of Africa. The rivers of David Livingstone and the African Queen; the Kunene, the Okavango and the Zambesi in the North and the Orange River in the South. The challenge for Namibia is that these perennial rivers (as the map refers to them) rise in Angola and South Africa respectively and even where they touch Namibia it is only one side of the river which sits within our borders.

The Okavango defies my school geography lessons by not ending it’s days in the sea. Instead its massive meandering delta is hundreds of miles away in the centre of Africa. But it’s into Botswana that it meanders, not Namibia. So how does Namibia ensure that the water bills it’s population pays are honoured by the steady provision of water?

As I drive north towards the Angolan border I become aware that the road is shadowed by a long, narrow, straight, concrete lined canal. It’s banks are vivid with drying washing as women bend to scrub clothes and draw water. Cattle and goats drink from it and I catch a glimpse of a naked man lathering his body to wash. This water is being channelled straight from Angola to provide drinking water for the towns of the North, and for the many huddles of grass huts that make up the farm homesteads along the way.

The canal starts its journey from below the Ruacana Falls. The Falls themselves sit in the no man’s land between the Angolan and Namibian borders. There is a hydro electric station diverting the power of the falls to provide electricity for Namibia, although the dam itself sits in Angola. By June the Falls have been switched off, their reduced water flow funneled into the huge turbines to feed the HEP; the rocks stand stark and bare and the thunder of water is silenced until the rains return.

But there is another source of water for the communities living around the canal banks. The region I live in is called Oshana; an oshana is a shallow area of water and during the rainy season much of the land here is covered by these glistening stretches of water. Cattle and donkeys stand motionless up to their haunches in the water cooling themselves, while nearby people draw water for drinking and, as the rains cease and the oshanas shrink, woman fish using conical woven baskets without a base. These tough, wiry women stand ankle deep in this bilharzia rich water frantically stabbing the baskets around them until they trap small catfish. The trap has a little window cut out of its side and the women reach inside to pluck the fish out.

As the dry season inexorably progresses these oshanas too completely disappear and I’ve no idea how the fish ensure their spawn survive to start the cycle once more. The waters that build up in the oshanas ultimately drain, via yet more ephemeral rivers, into the vast Pan of Etosha filling water holes for the herds of zebra, gazelle, elephants, giraffes and the lions of Namibia’s largest and richest game reserve.

Still images by Mike and Vicki Masters

Beneath some of the ephemeral rivers there are underground rivers into bore holes have been sunk. Unfortunately the water that is pumped from them is brackish and unpalatable. Swakopmund, a coastal town and Namibia’s second city, I learn, means diarrhoea mouth because of the effects of drinking the water that lies beneath it’s ephemeral river

There is yet another source of water, in the land of the San People, which spans the Kalahari across the long border with Botswana. Deep in the earth bore holes are sunk often to a depth of over 100m, and the water is pumped to the surface to be contained in small water holes. The pump is protected by high stone walls to keep elephants out. Sometimes the elephants refuse to be held at bay and send the walls crashing to perdition so the San have to keep re building them higher and stronger.

But why is Namibia a place of ephemeral waters? I find the landscape of shallow lakes strongly reminiscent of Deoghar State in Northern India and the dusky pink deserts in central Namibia transport me to the Northern Territories of Australia. My guidebook explains all. Namibia and the Northern Territories have the Tropic of Capricorn bisecting them, whilst Deogbar has the Tropic of Cancer. The Tropics are where deserts are found, uniformly across our planet. Sunlight, unsurprisingly, is most intense at the Equator and thus water evaporates most energetically here, rising to condense and fall on the equatorial rainforest.

The dry air rises higher and is swept away to the Tropics descending to ground level without precipitation. Hence the desert occurs. The surprising amount of life that survives in the Namib has adapted to catch water where it may; often from the dew that condenses from nearby sea mists. However the general effect is that Namibia is a very, very dry country and is mostly dependant on the good will of it’s neighbours for its water supplies.

Namibia is within sub Saharan Africa and sits somewhere in the middle in terms of World Bank rankings of the developing world. Rich mineral deposits, including uranium, mean the country is courted by numerous foreign powers however the processing of all its raw materials elsewhere ensures that it still relies on foreign aid and donations. The upside is that the demands on the water supply from industry are low.

Many people still live in the traditional cluster of grass hut farmsteads but inexorably the younger people drift towards the towns, often ending up living a precarious existence in the shanty towns which ring the cities of Namibia. This coupled with the rise of a comfortably off middle class, owning large homes with the same range of high water consuming electrical goods of any Western home, means levels of water consumption can only rise. And Namibia has a vision that by 2030 it will be part of the developed world and we all know the impact of that environmentally.

There is a Ministry of Agriculture, Water & Rural Development, and it says something about the priority of water supplies that ‘water’ is featured in this Ministry’s title. In 1998 Namwater, a public utility but one which receives no government subsidy, was formed. Initially Namwater was dogged by problems with its then Chief Executive being investigated for irregularities followed by a senior manager being charged with using the company credit card inappropriately, including purchasing condoms.

The company also struggled to raise revenue with over N$80 million in bad debts, including non payment by other public sector bodies. However in the last couple of years Namwater has raised it’s profile and there’s no doubt it’s successful in the most critical area: the tap water is safe to drink. I can personally vouch for this since I’ve been drinking it since my arrival with no ill effects, something I would never have done in India.

Cuts in supply happen infrequently, although it does vary from region to region. Non payment of water bills mean no tap water and there’s a radio advert depicting a family where grandma has become sick from drinking contaminated water because they didn’t pay their water bill. It says something about how valued older people still are in this country that it is a sick grandma that is used to prick the conscience and encourage water bill payments.

Namibia is heading for challenges in terms of the increased demand on its limited supplies of water. With supplies dependant on either transporting water long distances or storing it during the rainy season, and the attendant problems of seepage and evaporation, not only will we have ephemeral rivers, we may be heading for an ephemeral water supply.