UNHCR Compound, Iriba

One thing we are continually being told is just how important water is here. On the flight up to the North last week, the pervasive Sahara became more and more evident, and today we saw just what an all-consuming task the search for water is.

We set off on a 5-car convoy, led by our new friends from the army (we have taken individual posed photos of them all, shouldering arms, looking mean, and one even on the back of a camel...all at their request). Today's itinerary is designed to give us an idea of how local animal owners cope in this harsh environment. And so we drive miles out over bleak arid plains, temporarily (at least) transformed by the rains into seemingly endless acres of waving grass. Criss-crossing the plains are broad dry river beds, or wadis, which sustain magnificent and ancient old trees, and in places verdant patches of greenery and even permanent bodies of water at which hundreds of animals are being watered. The villagers we met seemed content and peaceable. Their ways of life have changed little in centuries, and yet they have to be versatile to cope with bad seasons of rain, or outbreaks of disease amongst their cattle. The SPANA mission is one they are genuinely interested in, and we are overrun at nearly every stop.

We get back to Iriba with a fuller picture of how a livestock owner copes in this environment. We also discover that we have a water issue ourselves - there isn't any. If fact there hasn't been any since Thursday evening. Beer is really the only alternative but even we can't wash in beer (although I did once know someone who did just that).

Thankfully our colleagues at Oxfam, with whom we share a table at mealtimes, offer us access to their bowser, so we make a short journey cross town in their car in total darkness, fill up buckets and empty bottles and begin a very slow journey homewards.

It's impossible not to think of Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring commentating on "It's a Knockout" as the water sloshes around, but we have enough to wash and clean our teeth with. Quite an easy task compared with what we'e seen today - donkeys being loaded up with water barrels and buckets by small children, who have first dug holes in the sandy bottoms of dry rivers. They do at least have their donkeys to help them home.