ts
panied by the long swiiiiiiish and quick
in the field not many yards from my
the house, the low chug of the pump
ation pond.
ed several
ds’ house for
at family of
tly to use their
vine for
m Penh
growing
s of years,
ing water for
the flooding and draining of rice
terraces and paddies. Two rivers
meet in Nayoro, our sabbatical
town that year. Rain and snow
were abundant. (About 1,159
millimetres [45.6 inches] of
precipitation falls annually in
Nayoro.) Crops flourished. An
irrigation ditch, complete
with fish, ran by our suite.
We helped our friends
weed their rice paddy,
sliding bare feet
through the mud to
pull the weeds out
between our toes.
In Mauritania in
the Sahara Desert,
our water travelled
via surface pipes
sixty kilometres
from an aquifer in the
desert, eventually to a
cistern in our compound.
We husbanded the water
from the cistern, took quick
cool-water showers, and rarely
threw out cooking water, instead
using it to water herbs.
Each tree in the greenbelt
protecting the city of Nouakchott