Experiencing every day life in a rural village in Chad, was an extremely eye-opening to what people have to go through just to make it through the day.
Chad is a land-locked country with a life expectancy of 51. That is 30 years less than the UK. Chad is a place of extreme poverty and the village of Maramara in the south east of the country is particularly poor. Only one thousand people live in Maramara and the village has recently fallen victim to a voracious fire that destroyed 80% of the crops and the houses.
In the region of Chad where Maramara is situated, water is hard to come by. There are ever-present dangers of hunger and malnutrition.
Where Do People Stay
Villagers stay in thatched huts, made from millet tightly woven together. When this is dried it becomes a tough and resistant material. In other villagers, huts are made from mud, which are dried out in the forms of bricks and more mud is added to form the cement. On the roof leaves are added to provide extra protection.
The huts the villagers live in are made of dried grass and leaves which provide insulation
A man making the walls of a house by tying grass together
What the villagers sleep on inside the huts
What Do People Eat In The Village Life Of Chad
Families are big in Chad. It is not uncommon to have 15 people living under one roof. That is a lot of mouths to feed. They normally have two meals a day. For the morning meal, boiled rice in the afternoon and some kind of meat normally chicken. Millet or/and vegetables are added to this.
A lady smashing millet, a staple food of the Maramara people. The millet is then ground down to make dough.
The dough is eaten with a sauce of okra paste
The gizzard of the chicken is offered to the special guest.
Infant Mortality
This is major problem for village life in Chad. One in six children die before their fifth birthday. Globally, Chad has the third worst child mortality rate. There is simply, not enough quality food to keep people healthy and throughout the country 38% suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Schools
As it is considered more important for boys to go to school, only 5% of girls go to secondary school. Many marry in their teens and education falls by the way-side. This high drop-out rate also applies to boys. There is a high rate of children that work from the ages of 5 to 11 that are forced to work for a living. Only 40% of children actually primary school at all.
Source – BBC
A school in the village of Maramara
The Amazing Work Of Northridge Church
A charity called the Northridge Church have recently been working hard to help the locals get the infrastructure back up and running. Up to now, they have provided three months of food, tarp for building with, cans for water and also built a school. We visited for the day to see what it was like living in a typical village in Chad.
The church has put in a well as clean drinking water is the biggest problem people face in these communities
For more information about what great things they are doing, please visit their site.
