My name is Nagnouman Samake from N’korobougou, a member of the garden. I would like to share with you what it was like in this village when I was young.
 

Before, there were many tall trees like Kaïlcedrat, Néré, Shea, big mangoes. And these trees gave us a lot of fruit — there were plenty of trees here. When the rainy season came, it rained very well here and people had success farming. There was water in the stream even during the dry season. Coming back from the market, we could hear birds singing everywhere and the animals drank water in the stream. We often drank water there too because it was clean and fresh. But we can't drink the water in the stream now because it is contaminated with chemicals.
 

Cutting down trees and making charcoal are more recent sources of income. When we started to cut down trees, we noticed that the rain also started to fall less. Due to the dryness, the remaining Shea trees now only give us a bit of fruit. Honestly, things are different now in many ways. Big trees are disappearing, we face a great lack of water and it is more difficult to feed our families.  Nature is becoming damaged. In my opinion, these things didn’t happen before.
 

Thank you to The Wash Project for being a great supporter for us. Our dream is to have a good garden with a lot of available space for us to work.”
 

- Nagnouman Samake, a member of the women’s garden in N’korobougou