Africa has abundant groundwater reserves. Why do they drink muddy water instead of drilling wells?
Carrying a bucket on your head, hiking more than ten kilometers in hot summer just to fill a bucket of water, this is a daily experience that many Africans experience every day.
So why don't Africans dig a well deep in the ground? Or simply settle in a location with a source of water?
Before understanding this issue, let's take a look at the ecological situation in Africa.
The African continent is near the equator and has a savanna climate. The most obvious place for this climate is that it is divided into two seasons, dry and rainy. The African land is either in extreme heat of drought and cracking, or in extreme floods in which rivers swell or even burst dykes. Simply put, it is either drought or flood, and there is no compromise.
In addition, there is generally no running water pipe in Africa, and there are generally no water storage conditions in the places where Africans live. Therefore, during the rainy season, they usually guard the small puddles near the river. During the long and difficult dry season, these Africans will do their best to carry containers and travel more than ten kilometers to find water sources.
Moreover, these water sources are often left unattended, and under natural conditions, the water is often extremely turbid, almost like yellow mud soup, not to mention that wild animals from Shili Baxiang occasionally come here to drink water.
It can be seen from this that these living waters, which are regarded as treasures by Africans, cannot be guaranteed to be hygienic at all. They are full of pathogenic bacteria and viruses, which is also a major reason for the spread of dysentery in Africa.
Some people will ask when they see this, why don't they just settle near the river, don't they go to the river to fetch water during the dry season?
Earlier we mentioned that Africa has a savanna climate. In addition to the obvious difference between dry and rainy seasons, this climate has also nurtured many wild animals on the African continent, such as lions, hyenas, bison and so on. During the rainy season, it is good to say that there are water sources everywhere in Africa. Once in the dry season, these animals will occupy the water sources and be hostile to all creatures that try to steal their water sources.
One side is the hyena lion with red eyes in the dry season, and the other side is the river that will burst its banks in the rainy season. No matter how Africans choose to settle down, it will be a problem. What is going on?
No one wants to open their eyes in the morning to find a hyena or a lion lying on their doorstep. After all, during the dry season, wild animals tend to hog water.
Residential areas with the main population of old, young, and women cannot be chosen too close to these animals. In addition, during the rainy season, rivers often burst their banks, and the rushing river water is swarmed with germs, and a plague will break out if you are not careful. .
The above two points determine the choice of African settlements:
Keep away from the riverbed to prevent the river from bursting its banks.
It cannot be too close to the water source in the dry season, because it is necessary to prevent the harassment of wild animals.
After settling, they will also cultivate farmland to provide themselves with long-term food through industrious farming. After the farmland has been reclaimed and plants have begun to grow, these Africans are naturally even less likely to abandon their built homes and live in the kind of tribal life that often migrates following water sources.
Therefore, this way of traveling to get water is, to a certain extent, the best solution that has been learned through countless bloody lessons.
do you know? Although Africa is very dry, it is extremely rich in groundwater. Why would Africans prefer to compete with lions for water sources instead of digging wells for water?
In 2012, the University of London and the British Geological Service jointly conducted a survey of groundwater in the entire African plate. This operation has proved that the underground of the African continent contains extremely rich groundwater reserves, which is probably the current surface of the African continent. One hundred times the sum of water.
What's even more interesting is that this huge stock of groundwater is actually stored under the Sahara Desert, a region famous for its drought, which secretly hides "good water" behind everyone's back.
The desert sand, in the rainy season, swallows every drop of rainwater from the sky with its ultra-high permeability. In the dry season, these sands build an indestructible anti-evaporation city wall for the groundwater because of their small and meticulous characteristics, and the groundwater has been filtered by sand and gravel, which is not only rich in trace elements, but also ensures that the water source will not be polluted.
Not to mention that the Sahara Desert was an oasis full of life thousands of years ago, but as the stars shifted and the climate evolved, it gradually became the death desert we see today.
But what needs to be mentioned is that although the plants in the Saharan oasis are gone, the groundwater that once supported those plants has not been affected in the slightest. It is also relying on the previous inventory, coupled with the storage in the rainy season for so many years, that the bottom of this forbidden area of life has become a super reservoir.
In addition, the international community has also dug a lot of water wells for Africa before, but they are too poor, and those small countries and residential areas can't pay for maintenance. As a result, many of those wells have fallen into disrepair and scrapped.
Coupled with the large population in Africa, the population base is here, and the aid of several wells cannot change their living environment at all.
And they also discovered that they don't need to spend money to dig wells themselves. As long as they delay long enough, there will be international humanitarian organizations to help. Why bother to dig wells by themselves?
Slowly, they would rather travel long distances to fetch water rather than raise money to dig a well. After all, they think there will always be a humanitarian organization to help them. Before that, drinking a sip or two of dirty water is nothing.