Dicing with Death: Chad – The Desert Takes on Water

This year in Chad, even the desert is flooded.

The whole country is under water. Chad is experiencing flooding on an unprecedented scale. More than a million people are affected by the rising waters. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of fields have disappeared, a tragedy in a country where a third of the population is food insecure.

In oil-rich southern Chad, the benefits of black gold do not trickle down to the local population, turning every journey into an epic. Norbert and Souleymane exhaust themselves every week on a broken-down track to supply the region’s markets with goods.

“In this country, it’s like the president doesn’t exist, he doesn’t want to help us. He should fix this road. The raging waters have washed away chunks of the road, and in places, the track is submerged for hundreds of meters… 

But as always, every misfortune has its silver lining! Some clever people have found a way to make a bit of money by building makeshift rafts.

In a country long plagued by wars, the immense courage of the Chadians remains the best weapon in this permanent, daily battle against the rising waters.