In June 1998 FORIM contributed $435.00 to Trey Carr's drip irrigation project the village of Breun, just west of Rosso. Trey introduced an inexpensive but effective drip irrigation system in which water is dripped from the base of each plant, conserving water, and spoon-feeding each plant the amount of water they need.

Dear FORIM,

Though I plan to give you a more formal account of our introduction of drip irrigation to Mauritania, briefly, we did good work. I installed one system in my village with my village mom, and took another to Nouakchott, where I demonstrated it to a couple of Peace Corps Volunteers, Robert Dorian and Jen Rierson, as well as to Aw Mohamedou, Associate Peace Corps Director/AgroForestry.

After a hard sales job full of hopeful explanations to difficult questions, they were all impressed and excited by the potential of the drip system. The kit I took to NKT was to be taken to the stage in Boghe, where the new trainees would compare its ability to compete with alternative irrigation methods.

However, in the past two weeks I have received two letters from my village mother, who also mailed pictures of the garden from the drip system and a vegetable (kohlrabi) it has produced. While she has altered the watering system a bit (4 buckets in the morning instead of one in the morning and one at night), my mom is pleased with the system. She hopes that as it is successful, other villagers will gain interest and purchase the system from her. (We aren't in the business of giving things away, as I'm sure many of you already understand.)

I plan to write up a more detailed report later for the next FORIM newsletter, but I hope that this short report will suffice until then.