“Of course, we are very worried about the [Grand Ethiopiam Rennaissance Dam], we can already see the water level going down every year. We used to get 50 billion litres, and I don’t even think that we get half of that now- maybe even less.” “What is really bad is that people are using the canals for the sewage, not just people but factories, they just dump in the canals...which means you can’t grow the same crops that you could have before, because the water is really dirty.”“New industries open up here all the time. And now, people farm fish, it’s an industrial thing but I think it makes money now. We have the water, you know from the Nile, so it makes sense to use it. The water has so much pollutant, from the sewage and factories, but the fish - they eat it! So, we grow fish now, we farm them, just like we used to grow plants, now we have fish - it’s very funny!”“We don’t plant like we used to, because we don’t have the water to do that...but it’s okay, we plant what we have Alhamdulillah. We leave the holes out so we plant a palm in every third one, because they take a lot up a lot of water. But sometimes we’ll plant [prickly pears] instead or sometimes easy herbs
And even
when the British left, the army did not return the water to them. Instead, they
redirected the water to the right bank of the canal, where they set up a new
factory to process chemical salts in large basins.
“As the water level drops, we pump from lower and lower down, but the problem is that we’re often sucking up sewage water to irrigate with.”