Watigueleya Kèlê Damaro

One of the causes of the drought is bush fires. As you can see, it’s an early fire. In November, between the rainy season and the dry season, the people of Damaro are allowed to set bush fires to burn only grasses and spare the plants. This policy is put in place as part of the preservation of plants here

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Tenen Sangare explains that she has two types of difficulties in the lowlands: the cows and the lack of water. The cows are free in this dry season and come to graze in her field. The lack of water too: they suffer a lot. If there is no water in a lowland, the production cannot be good.   She can’t afford

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Mandiou Camara speaks: “I am stopped in the middle of the pond. Look, there is no more water left in the pond. Otherwise it used to be a big pond. It is also a pond where we grow crops. You see, farming doesn’t work. One day a gentleman asked us to lend him our land. We told him that agriculture

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The question of climate resilience also arises in terms of resource extraction and the production of agricultural tools. Amadou Siaki is a blacksmith in Damaro. His name, ‘Siaki’, literally means ‘jeweller’, which is what he is commonly called in the village. Otherwise, he is a blacksmith by birth, ‘numu’, which literally means ‘blacksmith’ in the broad sense. He who is

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By Aguibou Sow Mandiou Camara speaks: “Here, the parents, the great-grandparents all found the baobab tree already big. They used to test their bows on the baobab. During the dry season, you can even see the cuts of the spears and arrows in the bark of the tree. This tree is very old, Fama, Fakassia, Fadiaraken: none of these ancestors

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El Hadj Fantamady Damaro Camara, president of Damaro’s Fakassia union.     “It is the association of the children of Damaro, of all the nationals, friends and allies, those from outside and inside. Within the association, every year, all the sons of Damaro meet in a general assembly to present projects and programmes for the development of Damaro.     The union

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The third workshop of the Watigueleya Kélê project took place in Damaro, Guinea, from Monday 28 February to Thursday 3 March 2022. The workshop focused on theatre as a means of raising awareness about the effects of climate change. The objective was to train village communication relays to develop and perform skits on the theme of climate resilience, so that

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In March 2022, Marie Rodet and Elara Bertho presented the book Djiguiba Camara, Essai d’histoire locale (available in free access here) to the descendants of the Camara family in the village of Damaro, a partner of the Watigueleya Kèlê project. The book traces the long history of the Camara migrations, accounts of the founding of the village, resistance to French

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Ansoumane Camara in the Nakotou forest, one and a half kilometres from Damaro centre. From now on, when a tree is cut down (for a funeral or other reason), the community obliges to reforest in the forest, in return. This forest has always existed and the climate is very mild. The aim is to reforest the whole of Damaro.  

By Elara Bertho (LAM, Sciences Po Bordeaux), Co-investigator in SOAS research project: Watigueleya Kèlê, Equitable Climate Resilience in West Africa: A Comparative Research Action Programme (Mali, Guinea and Senegal) In a reflection on the notion of a collective village repertoire and its digitisation, I return to the research-action programme carried out with the Malian association Donkosira, which since 2017 has

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