Recrudescence et gestion endogène des inondations dans le 9ème arrondissement de N’Djamena : contribution à l’anthropologie écologique

Abstract

The present work deals with " Culture and flood management in N'Djamena, case of the 9th district: Contribution to ecological anthropology " It harness the increase in flooding in the 9th district of the city of N'Djamena. To fight against floods, the Chadian government has developed a first contingency plan, the plans consisted among others: the construction of the bridge linking the Chari river on the Chadian side to the Cameroonian bank of the Logone river in Kousseri, it has also built a dam to prevent the waters of the Chari river from invading the city These infrastructural constructions had allowed the populations of N'Djamena in general and those of the 9th district in particular to reduce the damage caused by flooding. In spite of the contingency plan, nowadays, the risks related to floods remain omnipresent. This being said, culture is the set of adaptation or resilience mechanisms that the population adopts to solve a specific problem. Therefore, the population of the said district does not give up and expect everything from the State and its partners; it sets up resilience mechanisms to fight against floods. To better understand the flooding, the question formulated is how to understand the recrudescence of flooding in the 9th district in N'Djamena? This main question gave rise to three secondary questions: what are the factors of flooding in the 9th district of N'Djamena? Secondly, what are the impacts related to floods in the 9th district of N'Djamena? And finally, to know how to set up adaptation mechanisms to fight against floods in the 9th district of the city of N'Djamena? This research was built around the hypothesis that the recurrence of floods in the city of N'Djamena can be explained through the situation of anger of the spirits (genies, ancestors, and gods), drains and overflow of river beds (Chari-Logone) by rainwater, population growth, activities related to man, insalubrity and anarchic occupations of flood-prone areas. The objective of this work is to understand the increase in flooding in the 9th district of N'Djamena. By way of methodology, we have carried out a double research: the first is the documentary review. It allowed us to identify the literature and reorient our research by highlighting its originality. The second is the field research. The present work was based on a qualitative approach carried out through the exploitation of life story data, observation and individual in-depth interviews. The data collected was subjected to content analysis and interpretation. Thus, this research mobilized the theories of ethnomethodology (1960) and cultural ecology (1995) to interpret the results. This corpus of data and model of analysis led to the results according to which the origin of the floods in the 9th arrondissement is due primarily to the anger of the genies. The latter manifest their anger by excess rainfall causing flooding. The latter have impacts on the sacred places such as the cemetery and places of worship, on the environment and on housing. There are material and human losses. With regard to this disaster, the local population is adopting resiliency mechanisms both in their individuality and collectively to cope with the floods. Note that the State and its partners also provide support.