I thought life would be easier and slightly safer. I was wrong

In 1994 I was daft enough to stay in Aden, South Yemen, and watch the antics of a country trying to tear itself apart with a civil war. However, it wasn't a complete waste of time and one of the most useful things that I learnt from the experience was the value of water. Not just how little you actually require to exist, but also how little you need in order to maintain some semblance of bodily hygiene. I was lucky. I lived in the flat that belonged to an Indian nurse, Pitchiamal, who had lived there through much worse, in the days when Yemeni civil wars were a quinquennial event. When, in the middle of May, the water supply eventually failed, there was enough water in the flat to maintain some sort of civilised existence. It was not just that every conceivable container had been filled before Pitchi left, but that she had also taught me how to be economical with what little I had. Water you wash with can be reused to wash clothes and then reused to clean your bum and then flush the toilet. Just about the only water that was used only once was – the surprisingly little – that I needed to drink.

Water, anywhere, is a very precious and much undervalued essential in life and only when you have to collect the stuff every day or don't have it at all, do you begin to realise its real value. It was therefore all the more surprising to find that in a place like Benshasha, this appears to have gone completely unnoticed.

Water is available – free - but you have to get it from about 15 - 20 m underground in one of three wells. In order to do this, you have to pull it up with a bucket and rope. This water is undrinkable, as it is both brackish and laden with more e-coli than even the Benshasha digestive system can cope with.

There is a pump on the well nearest to the mosque, and there it remains as a monument to remind you that people in Benshasha can – and will – break anything. These pumps really are pretty unbreakable - or so I thought. You see them on almost every street corner in Indian suburbs and villages - almost exactly the same - made of cast iron and with but two moving parts. In India they are all still working perfectly after more than fifty years maximum use and abuse and the very minimum of maintenance. OK – the ones in India are of British, not French make, but I cannot believe that the one in Benshasha lasted less than five years is purely and simply because it is French. No wonder the authorities had second thoughts about providing anything as complicated as a tap. It is an absolute certainty that it would be broken within hours if not minutes. I was not wrong. A year later the water supply was connected to the stand-pipe. It was broken during the first day and disconnected by the authorities in the evening!

There is no concept of cleanliness or hygiene at the well. The top is broken and now little more than a few inches above ground level. This makes it easier to climb on to and easier for dirt to 'get into'. At any one time, up to five people stand on the edge to draw water. The well is permanently surrounded by a pool of mud, due to the amount of water that gets spilt. Because of this there are also donkeys, cows and sheep, when they get the chance, as it is about the only place where they can get a drink.

Therefore, the well is not just surrounded by a pool of mud, it is surrounded by a sea of s**t. To get water, everyone has to wade through this and then stand on the well surround to draw the water. The water that gets split on the surround washes off the mud and keeps the top of the well (and people's feet) nice and clean. The only problem is that at least 50% of the spilled water (and mud) washes back into the well.

The containers used to draw the water are not 'buckets' but five-litre plastic 'cans' that formerly contained engine oil and preferred to cooking oil containers because they are sturdier. The cans are often dropped on the ground beside the well before being thrown down to the water level and therefore, they are also covered in shit. You don't have to be a biochemist, or even very bright, to realise that the water is a lot less than clean.

I have lived in some pretty backward places and everywhere that I have lived has had some rudimentary understanding of basic hygiene. One aspect of this is the need to keep water for drinking separate and to keep it in clean containers. Everywhere this is, except in Benshasha. It is not just that nothing is clean, a matter which could, not entirely convincingly, be blamed on the circumstances and the conditions, but there is not an inkling of understanding of the basic concept.

Water containers are cleaned - once - for the simple reason that they don't like the taste of engine oil. Cleaning 'new' containers is done with soap (Tide) and bleach. This leaves any water kept in them tasting of bleach, but that's OK as it means that it is 'clean'. The Benshasha logic is simple. Because - after the initial cleaning – the containers only ever have water in them, they can't get dirty and therefore must be 'clean'. There is therefore no need for them ever to be cleaned again, which saves time, energy and - of course - precious water.

Thus, when Ayanne (actually Abdu Waheb, Fatna's youngest son, but I gave him the name Ayanne – Moroccan for 'tired' - and it stuck, so now everyone calls him thus), goes off to draw water, he just collects as many empty containers as he can find. These may be anywhere but usually in the kitchen, in the toilet and just lying around outside in the dust or the mud, wherever the ladies have last been doing the washing or the washing up.

Nobody ever puts the tops back on water containers and although Ayanne isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he does have sufficient wit to realise that pushing a wheelbarrow full of open-topped containers means having to make rather more trips than necessary. Laziness really is the mother of invention.

Thus, before going to fetch water Ayanne picks up all the plastic caps from the floor of kitchen, the toilet and wherever the ladies have last been doing the washing or the washing up.

The 'bucket and string' for pulling the water up from the well will also be picked up from wherever Ayanne last dropped it on the ground, in the dust or the mud, along with a funnel which is a 1.5 ltr plastic coke bottle, cut in half.

Nothing is cleaned and the worst of it is that most of the tops to the containers seem to end up on the floor of the toilet which would take a little more than sodium metabisulphate to neutralise.

And exactly the same will happen when Tara goes to get drinking water; although there is an outside chance that you might be able to spot a 'drinking' water container, as she ties two of the things together so that she can sling them over the back of her donkey, and as Moroccan knots are 'undo-able', they remain tied together until someone cuts the string.

Drinking water has to be bought from one of the two gentlemen in the village with the brains and the foresight to hitch their donkeys to some form of cart and go the six or seven kilometres to Mansouriah (where there is a mains supply) and fetch it. The alternative is to walk four kilometres in the opposite direction, and get it from a small motel on the edge of the motorway. Tara does this for the family, as she has a recalcitrant donkey, Leilah Allahoui.

It would be unfair to say that the authorities have done nothing. They tried bringing drinking water to Benshasha in a bowser. That lasted about three days for the simple reason that the drivers flatly refused to go there for fear of their lives. Again, I had wondered 'why' until I saw what happened.

One June afternoon, a bowser arrived to deliver water to one of the sites for a wedding. The entire place became a seething mass of screeching humanity as they clamoured for some water as though they were all about to expire from dehydration. There is no order, no regulation, nothing. Just everybody, with as many containers as they can carry or barrow, screaming and yelling 'me now, me now.' The entire place teeters on the brink of mob violence every single time this happens.

And even this behaviour is totally inane. I watched one 'delivery' in stunned disbelief. One day Fatna got wind of an approaching bowser and proceeded to empty all of the water containers – every last one of them. The fact that not one was remotely 'clean' mattered not one iota. This water was 'free' and, when she found him, Ayanne was sent off to get as much as he could. Three hours later he came back with slightly less than half of the containers about two-thirds full (there had not been time to find all the caps in the rush). The whole object of the operation was a complete waste of time as the water was (now) no more drinkable than what had previously been in there, and the other containers (that had been emptied in the rush) then had to be re-filled from the well anyway. Ayanne's 'confused' expression gave a hint that he might just have been thinking 'I think I might have been done'.

Fatima seemed to think that I was just being pedantic when I insisted that we amass enough containers of our own, in which to keep water. After weeks of debate, I got my way and managed to persuade Tara to let me have eight containers for the kitchen, four (red) for general use and four (silver) for drinking water. She also gave me four black ones for the toilet. For the hamam we needed another eight, but that is a different matter altogether.

All these containers had their own place and I thought life would be easier and slightly safer. I couldn't have been more wrong. Within hours the entire collection had been scattered everywhere. Asking 'nicely' and appealing to reason was a waste of breath. The only solution was to chain them together and padlock them. This only succeeded in getting me a reputation for being selfish and unreasonable.

Sadly, not even this was sufficient and as autumn came and the weather changed, I would find that Fatna had emptied everything and re-filled them with rain water, which is a prized commodity as it is somewhat softer than the well water and thereby uses a deal less soap.

However, the one water container that is remotely clean is the receptacle for the water that Ibrahim uses to wash his feet before he goes to the mosque. This small, black plastic bucket must not be touched by anyone. It must not be allowed to touch the floor of the toilet and it must only have boiled 'drinking' water placed in it and then - only by the man himself. For the rest of the time it lives on a plastic sheet on a shelf in his bedroom and is covered with another plastic sheet. This recepticle must be clean at all costs.

It is not that Ibrahim is fastidiously clean. Amongst my few possessions was a small plastic jug which I kept for the sole purpose of washing my nether regions after defecating. This was kept, hung up on a nail, out of reach of anyone less than 1.85m and thereby pretty safe – or so I thought.

One of the strange and clearer memories my childhood is that we used to keep our tooth-brushes in a small brass pot which my Father had brought back from India, where he had spent most of the war. One Christmas we had an Indian gentleman to stay, my parents belonging to something called 'The East-West Friendship Society', which subjected foreigners to some of our more peculiar rituals, in the hope that it would make them 'feel at home'. He appeared, from his first visit to the bathroom, as though he had seen a ghost and had to be forcibly restrained from leaving the house in disgust and indignation there and then. At that time I was blissfully unaware that I was living in a minority world where people used paper to clean themselves after defecating and, at the time, found the whole thing somewhat amusing, not fully understanding quite what Indians did with the little brass pot. Years later, having lived, for most of the time, where washing rather than wiping is the norm, I appreciated the need for such receptacles and that it is not the done thing to keep one's toothbrush in them.

Back to my small plastic jug. It turned up eventually - Ibrahim had taken it. And what for? To keep his toothbrush and soap in!

I duly repossessed it and told him what I used it for. He was not amused but, on the other hand, neither was I - with the fact that he had taken it in the first place - especially as it was not just lying about, and he would have had to have got something to stand on just to reach it. The whole matter of property ownership and what constitutes 'theft' is an entirely different matter and dealt with elsewhere.

Drawing water from a well is not necessarily the most onerous task in the world but does, nevertheless, require considerable time and some effort. The water is hauled up using 5 litre, plastic 'cans', which had – hitherto - held engine or cooking oil, as mentioned above. These, with the tops cut off (so that they will fill) bring up, at the best, four litres at a time, but usually about three. When you do this, not just for yourself but the entire family, you begin to count: 'one for this, one for that' etc. and realise just how much you get through every day.

One would have thought that having to do this as a daily chore, would have instilled some vestige of respect for the commodity, but no. They waste water in a manner hitherto undreamed of and the rule seems to be, 'never use a gallon when you can use three'. It is not that they are especially clean. They are not. In fact I would go as far as to say that they are quite the dirtiest people I have ever met. But when they wash, whether it is the dishes, the clothes or themselves, they use about ten times more water than they actually need to and waste most of that. This is all the more incomprehensible because it has to be obtained so laboriously and they are also some of the most indolent people I have ever come across. This can only be interpreted as an indication of the level of their basic intelligence.

Ayanne has but one 'chore' in life, which is to get the water. He hates the task and avoids it if at all possible. However, when he does wash, he uses almost 50 litres at a time and this is not to fill a large tub and lounge in, it is just poured over his head with the bottom half of a plastic 1 ltr coke bottle.

However, women regard washing as a rather special social ritual and it takes hours. It also uses water at a phenomenal rate. It is impossible for them to wash on their own, a minimum of two are required but it seems to be 'the more the merrier'. This means that, before the ritual takes place, someone has to be pretty energetic with the water gathering and this could well be the reason that they wash so seldom, as Ayanne regards it as outside his terms of reference.

Having 'hamam' is about the only time that they are really fastidious about what the water is used. Rainwater must be used to wash their hair, and drinking water must be used to rinse their bodies, once everything else is done.

I can only assume that they wash so seldom that they think that they have to make a good job of it when they do. Soap, like the water, is used at an unbelievable rate. One bar of soap per person per session seems to be the order of the day together with one bottle of shampoo a head. The 'grommage' or ritual scrubbing, is done with a special glove, which would be better used for scouring old saucepans, and quite simply removes several layers of skin. This isn't 'cleaning', it is 'grating' and damned painful at that. All this is done whilst pouring water over themselves by the gallon and it seems that, as long as there is water there, they will use it.

After Fatima, Fatna and Tara have 'had hamam', someone has to refill every single water container that we possess, but even to have got that far, you will have already filled them twice and my 'duty', when the ladies bathed, was to be on standby and respond instantly to their yells of jeebli elmâa – or 'more water' For this reason alone, I was content not to urge them to wash any more often.

Water collecting is an almost entirely female preserve and Ayanne only does it at all because he is the youngest son and there are no daughters left at home to do it for him. However, he is not totally against doing it for the simple reason that it provides him with about the only legitimate opportunity to get anywhere near young women and thus he is able to fully appreciate the wonders that this form of daily exercise does to the upper female torso. He therefore surveys the operation very carefully before setting off. If there are only older women at the well, he flatly refuses to go at all. To me this proves that, despite all outward appearances, the lad is not totally stupid.

When I offered to collect water myself, it was greeted with astonishment and I was forcibly restrained. To start with, everyone assumed I would be unable to, as there is a certain 'knack' in getting the bucket to tip over and fill. Secondly no 'man' (other than, curiously, the Imam who does collect his own water) would be seen dead near the well, and thirdly that I was a foreigner. This last one they simply could not come to terms with. Almost their entire experience with foreigners has been with holiday-makers at Plage David, and their opinion seems to be that all foreigners employ Moroccans to do anything remotely resembling work.

Eventually I did get to collect water, for the simple reason that all the lads had gone off to the beach. We needed water, Fatna was unwell and I had no excuse. As I approached the well with the 'barrowette' laden with as many water-containers as it would hold, the women regarded me with the deepest of suspicion - a mixture of astonishment and awe. They stopped what they were doing and just stared impassively, like cows over a field gate – and without saying a word.

There are some positions, around the well, where drawing water is a little easier as you can see straight down. The woman who had been occupying 'position A', moved out of the way and motioned that I should get water from there. Shoukhrahn, I said and she looked at me as though I'd shot her. However, she did help me fill all my containers and to put all the lids back on, but all done in total silence while the others stared. When I said 'goodbye' they did mumble replies but I was nearly 100 metres away before they started talking properly and returned to their work.

When Ayanne returned from his slumbers on the beach and found that I'd filled all the containers he instantly saw an excuse to give up the chore that he so hated and thereafter I ended up collecting rather more than I really wanted to. Eventually we came to a compromise, I'd collect the water for Fatima and me, he'd collect it for his family. I was damned if I was going to collect water for him.

One other aspect of collecting water is that the filled containers have to be wheeled back to the house in the 'barrowette'. Now the shortest route is to go down into the wadi, walk through a tunnel under the road and up a path to the well. The wellhead is roughly the same level as the house but the bottom of the wadi is 20 or 30 feet lower. So - if you return by the same route that you go, you have to wheel the full barrow uphill for the last 250 metres. And this is exactly what they all do.

If, however you set off in a slightly different direction, the path is virtually level. There is a small 'hump' to get up on the road but from then on, the path is downhill all the way home. It is infinitely less effort even if it is a few metres further.

When I enquired why nobody else came back this way, I was told that it was because of the 'hump' to get up on to the road. They had all been attempting it head on, not impossible but difficult as the slope is about 30 °. No one of them had the wit to go a little bit further – past the point where they wanted to cross the road – and come back, taking the slope at an angle. My demonstrating this was greeted with blank astonishment. I couldn't believe it - even donkeys understand this simple principle and I still find it incredible to think that nobody had been able to work out something so obvious.

But back to the girls – for them, collecting the water, like washing, baking bread and other daily chores is turned into the nearest that they are likely to find in the way of a social occasion. It is one of the few chances they have to get out of and away from their houses and it provides a chance for them to chat to each other. For this reason alone the task takes twice as long as it really needs to. But, being a social event, they all help each other and as I slowly became accepted as a regular, I was helped and expected to help. I soon discovered that it was not the done thing to just fill your own containers and leave. It is important to 'help' each other, particularly if there are any old women about.

I began to realise that Benshahsa's female society is much more intricate and complex than I had first thought. As time wore on, the reasons why everything they do together takes much longer than necessary, started to make sense.

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