Homepage
Click to read the Newsletter


Help us

Notebook of the initiatives

Face of water in the Rumanian villages

The particular case of the Delta of the Danube.

Not far from Tulcea, after 2 hours of walk in the meanders of the Delta, we meet Dragos and his Eugen son.
Father of 4 children, Dragos lives with his family in the village of Patlageanca bordering banks of the Danube.
They are poor, does not have to him or very few incomes. They live primarily fruit of their kitchen garden and water of the Danube.
However water here at a price, that of sweat. It is between 200 and 300 Liters of water that they must puncture, up to 15 times per day, in the river, with foot, armed with two buckets, to satisfy their needs. The drudgery is carried out by all the members of the family without exceptions, of Dragos to his/her children, while passing through his wife.
Close to the edge, with the movements of the river, water is in charge of mud, then it is necessary to remove its shoes and to go to seek it further. Water, thus collected is put to elutriate a whole day (sometimes less) and is consumed just as it is.
To facilitate work in winter, at the time or water is cold, they trenched which brings the water of the river in a hole where it elutriates a little and the movements do not undergo.
No the problem of health??
Aucuns! They have the air in good health, of outside in any case and do not complain about particular problems.
But in any case that to make of other?
For a few months, Dragos has tried to dig a puit, but, although it is close to the river water is still not to 7 m of depth. However this level varies with the liking of the seasons (and of the Danube). Some of its neighbors have it with 10m, even more at worst of the season. Then it will continue to dig gradually.


Water in the villages in Romania:

With the fur and measures our visits in the villages, we notice the omnipresence of well. Information taken, it is indeed the only means which the villagers have to supply with drinking water.
Then there is everywhere, on the low sides of the road or in the gardens for luckiest. Romania does not seem to lack subsoil water. Fortunately! Agriculture and industry did not monopolize this invaluable liquid yet.
All the villages have same conformation more or less. A tarred road (a main road for example) the cross-piece right through. In this case, two side-walks make it possible the houses not to give directly on the road. And, when there is no tarred road, it there not of against alley bus few cars.
Roughly every 100 meters, on both sides of this road, is a puit. They have various structures, out of wood or concrete, according to the village or the site.
Some of these wells are without parapets. We even saw some who were not sheathed. Dug with same the ground, water that one draws there must then elutriate during a few hours, because it contains many muds in suspension.


We met two systems of well:
1. the wells with beam, primarily in the cultures because one needs place to handle them,
2. winch wells in the villages (a crank actuates a cylinder around whose the cord is rolled up which reassembles the bucket).

The water drudgery is carried out by all, women or men, girls or boys, everyone passes there. They go there with a cart, vats and jerry cans or simply with a bucket with the hand.

That one lives at side, then it comes to wash its potatos and its salad in the small stone feeding trough which is beside the puit.
Another benefits from rainwater recovered on the roofs in large plastic or concrete tanks. Water is then used to sprinkle the garden and sometimes for the domestic needs, the detergent or the shower.

There are obviously many families which have an electric pump connected to a water circuit in the house.

Here thus two faces of water in the Rumanian campaigns, where there is no distribution system of drinking water.

 

< prvious     next >     back <<


Photographs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dragos and his son, Eugen

 

 

 

 

A well in the village of Boita

A sheathed concrete well

A well without parapet

A well not sheathed

A well with beam

The system of winch

 

 

 

High of page

© Hydrotour 2003

Realisation Laure-Anne de Moncuit & Webdesigner.ro

Menu: