Flood irrigation farming in gardens of Sahel village. The water here comes from ancient foggara (underground aqueduct system) which hasn't been maintained for thirty years.
The foggara have supplied villages like this for a thousand years with fresh reliable water, but now are falling into disuse as young people are not interested in the difficult and dangerous work of going underground to clean and fix them. The foggara taps into near-surface water some six km from the village and transport it with natural gravity flow through a canal dug through hard rock eight meters below the surface. The water emerges in surface canals in the village where it is used by homes and then divided according to inherited ownership to private family gardens. The foggara is accessed by climbing barefoot down a meter-wide shaft with toe and finger holes on opposing sides of the descent.
