Water
In the Sahrawi refugee camps, the amount of water people receive depends on where they live, but most of us get between 12 and 20 liters per person each day. That’s only just enough – or sometimes not enough – to cover basic needs.
Some parts of the camps are connected to water networks, but other parts are not , including mine. We rely on water trucks. When the truck arrives, it fills large storage tanks sometimes for one family, sometimes shared by two families. It might be two months or more before it comes back again, so every drop of water matters.
Living with that kind of scarcity changes the way you think. You start asking yourself how far a single bucket of water can go, and how many times it can be used before it is finally lost.
That’s what led us to start experimenting.
We began with a sandoponic system, which uses up to 95 percent less water than conventional agriculture. Then we started asking another question: what if the water could pass through other uses before it reached the sandoponic system? Could the same water grow plants, support animals, and then grow even more plants?
We’re still experimenting, and the system keeps evolving. Each time we find a new way to reuse water, we can produce more food and support more life without needing any additional resources.
One of the most important parts of this experiment is recycling our greywater. We did some simple calculations to understand how much water we could recover and what that could mean in practical terms.
We installed a system in my house that collects our greywater and pumps it through a biofilter to remove oils and other residues. It doesn’t remove everything – things like soap are still present – but the water is good enough for trees that don’t produce food.
In our family of eight, we can recover around 112 liters of greywater every day. That’s enough to support about sixteen trees.
So we planted native trees that can survive in the desert. In a place like this, trees are incredibly important. They attract birds and insects, create shade, cool the surrounding area, and slowly bring life back to the landscape.
What surprised us most is that the system works even better than traditional irrigation. We use a very slow drip system that gives the roots time to absorb the water and keeps the soil moist for much longer.
To keep that moisture from evaporating, we started collecting discarded wood from a nearby landfill. We break it into small chips and spread it around the base of the trees. The mulch helps trap water in the ground, and over time the wood decomposes, improving the sandy soil and making it more fertile.
Little by little, we’re learning that even in one of the driest places on Earth, a single drop of water can have many lives.
