homemade fertiliser and strawberries

I first met engineer-turned-filmmaker Abdulkhaleq Alwan in 2010. In a country where groundwater is depleting fast, this young engineer, then 27, had made water issues fun for a mostly uneducated public.

As head of the awareness department at the capital's branch of the National Water Resources Authority, he talked to farmers about dwindling water resources, the ills of illegal well drilling, and the benefits of modern irrigation. He had turned himself into a filmmaker, directing spots in which he cast the farmers themselves to spread awareness about good practices in irrigation. He had printed poems by the farmers, and commissioned cartoons.

And then protests and political turmoil hit Yemen. When I wrote to him in May 2011, he and his colleagues hadn't been paid for months. None of the budget for 2011 had been received, and all programs, including colourful public information films, were on hold. Clashes on the road from Sana'a to Marib had meant no diesel for the capital’s water pumps and no water in the network for days. Instead, inhabitants were buying water from private trucks, not unusual in Sana'a, but at much higher prices than before the uprisings.

Now Alwan is studying for a masters in Intergrated Water Resource Management in Germany and Jordan, and hopes to return to Yemen for his thesis next autumn, if the situation permits. I caught up with him on Wednesday at a water utilities conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. At the end of the first day, he was most impressed by Mathias Stief’s talk on making a profit out of treating wastewater in Germany.

In Yemen, like Jordan and Egypt, water utilities are struggling to recover the costs of treating sewage to reuse its water in irrigation, he explained, but in Hamburg, they actually make money out of it! "They sell the sludge. They produce biogas. They sell the heat!" he says, laughing. Yes, a similar system would be possible in Yemen, but only after considerable investment in infrastructure and staff training.

Would it be difficult to convince Yemeni farmers to use the sludge on their fields? Not at all! says Alwan. At the Sana'a treatment plant, barely has sludge been laid out to dry that farmers turn up to buy it. “You can hold an auction!” he says. It's much cheaper than industrial fertiliser, and rich in potassium, phosphates, and nitrogen. Besides, Yemenis are used to sewage-issued fertiliser.

In many villages, including Alwan's outside of the capital Sana'a when he was growing up, each house made its own fertiliser from its small sewage pit. After cooking, ash from the fire would be thrown into it, to prevent bad odours and to start the fertiliser-making process. One or two years later, a mixture that looked like black soil would be extracted from the back of the house and used on the fields, until the end of the 1980s in Alwan's village, and probably until today in remote areas.

Alwan's family used to grow corn, tomatoes and potatoes, but switched to qat and strawberries when water started to become scarce. Wait, strawberries? “It’s a cash crop,” he says. Soon all the other farmers in the area where following suit.

Alwan talks to school children about good water management. Photo courtesy of NWRA

the yemeni crisis in cartoons

It's early 2010 after sunset. Another power cut. In the gloom of the old city of Sana'a, a Yemeni man strolls up to the corner shop. "Two of that nuclear power of Ali Abdallah Saleh's, please!" he says. The shopkeeper promptly hands him two white candles.

Power cuts have long been the subject of Yemeni jokes, but perhaps today more than ever. Here are only some of the cartoons by Rashad Assamiee, a young Yemeni cartoonist from Taiz regularly published in al-Jumhuriyya.

A colourful take on the current power, fuel, cooking gas, food, and water crises.

"That's it, I'm handing in my resignation! This is no life, working 24 hours a day..."

"No, that's it. We're going back to Somalia. Everything is in crisis with you! Electricity, water, diesel, petrol... There's even more fighting than in Somalia!"

(From right to left)

"Lunch, qat, mattress... Are you going on a trip?

- No Uncle Abdu, we're going to get cooking gas..."

"There's electricity! Hurry up before it cuts..."

"I have a lecture on Modern Mechanics in the afternoon and tomorrow one on Progress and Technology..."

Electricity cut: "Alright children, no one moves from their place! Let's not knock the water pipe over..."

(From right to left)

"The only thing is that before using it, you have to charge it for a full eight hours...

- What a nightmare! We don't even get eight hours of electricity a day!"

(From right to left)

"Humadi dear, wake up! The cooking gas just finished...

- Argh! The cooking gas man was in the middle of filling up three cylinders for me, and then you came and woke me up..."

"I'm guarding the car, uncle, so that they don't steal our petrol. We barely filled it up to half."

"Don't worry about the girl's mahr [gift from the groom to the bride usually including material, perfume, and gold], my son. Just bring me two gas cylinders, two canisters of petrol, two canisters of diesel and half a box of candles..."

putting gender back in water

In rural Yemen, it's a girl's job to fetch water. Girls often have to make long, back-breaking journeys to bring water home, a full-time job that can keep them out of school. If they grow up without an education, these girls are more likely to marry early, have a larger family to feed, die in childbirth, and bring up malnourished children. They are less likely to make themselves heard socially and politically, encourage their children's education, or contribute to their country's development.

Yemen's water crisis is complex and all-encompassing, with repercussions on many aspects of human development. Intricately linked to the country's alarming food insecurity, it is a challenge that remains increasingly important to tackle effectively - whoever is in power.

The following photos, that I took between 2008 and 2010 and that were recently awarded a reporting trip to Portugal with the EJC, take a look at the Yemeni water crisis through women's eyes.

Because a girl carries water - Shahara, North Yemen, 2009 - Siham, barely 10, carries water back home from a rainwater pool in her village. It's a girl's job to fetch water in rural Yemen, and those who have to walk miles every day to find water often miss out on an education. But Siham is lucky, and every morning she attends the village's girls primary school. After her picture was taken, she quietly asked for a pen.

Balancing buckets - Shahara, North Yemen, 2009 - In their bright plastic buckets, women collect water from one of the village's rainwater pools. Because it has been long since it last rained, the level inside the pool has dropped.

Eid water - Beit Baws, North Yemen, 2008 - Two girls carry water home from a pool at the bottom of their cliff-top village, on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sana'a. It's Eid al-Adha, an important Islamic festival, so the youngest girl is wearing lipstick.

Running the water home - Sana'a, North Yemen, 2010 - In cut-out jerry cans, two girls run home with the water they have collected from the local mosque. Despite a public water network in most of the Yemeni capital, in 2010, residents complained that the pipes ran dry for at least half of the month.

Tap to to dwindling groundwater - Amran, North Yemen, 2009 - A mother collects water from the public water tap. She makes several trips before she has enough for the day. Below the city where she lives, the groundwater level drops by three meters every year.

buying basil at half past eight

“My name is Enas and I am a spinster,” she says, re-adjusting her black scarf around her head. “Do you have a mirror?” I do, actually. A small multicolored spotty one I was given for Christmas. Should I whip it out in the middle of this dark garden?

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she says, waving her sickle towards the dimly-lit houses at the edge of the large green patch. “It’s dark, no one can see me anyway.”

“What about you? What is your name?” she asks. “Are you married or are you a spinster?” I consider this. I am 27. In my book that is not old, but then again I am not married. “I am a spinster,” I announce. She likes this. We become friends instantly.

She asks why I want basil. I explain it is to cook with, not for a bride or a dead man’s shroud as is usual in Yemen. She takes this in her stride. She knows this because she has American neighbors who do the same.

With her sickle, she gathers two large bunches of mint and one of wild basil. We step back over the damp earth mounds separating the lettuce, marjoram and radishes to the edge of the garden. Her elder sister, wrapped in the same red an blue cloth with nothing but her eyes and hands showing, is waiting.

She introduces me. The same question again. “I am a spinster, but God willing there is still hope,” I say. She laughs, “Not in Yemen!”