Musée de l’Eau, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

The Musée de l’Eau / Water Museum is a space for valuing water as a resource at cultural, sociological, anthropological and political levels.

The Museum collects and exhibits tangible water heritages such as water scoops, calabashes, ropes and intangible heritages such as songs, myths, and the manifold symbolisms of water.

The Museum permanent exhibitions invite visitors to explore different topics such as:

Water and sanitation
Water and women
Water and climat change
Water and human rights

Temporary exhibitions

The history of wash basins from tradition to modernity

The aim of the exhibition is to present and classify the wash basins according to their history and their uses in time. Together with basins analysis, the exhibition displays some everyday objects used to wash.

The endogenous techniques of water research

The exhibition displays the objects used by dowsers to reach and collect water: wood sticks (from Diopiros miliformis), bicycle spokes, car nuts. With an interactive aim, the exhibition invites visitors to use these objects for demonstration.

VISIT THE MUSEUM WEBSITE

SERs

The construction of the biggest water bottle with mineral water bottles [SDGs ACTIVITY]

This project, that will be organized on the next World Water Day (22^nd of March), will consist of assembling all the well-known brands of water bottles in the world to build a 10mt-high water bottle, with a circumference of 3.5 mt, which will be suspended on the highest peak in the country.

The initiative will address at least 5,000 people including 200 mayors, 200 deputies and 10 ministers and will be aimed to make people become aware of the danger of plastics and environmental pollution.

The Water Caravan [SDGs ACTIVITY]

As a future project, the caravan will be a procession of at least 500 people (men, women, disabled children, vulnerable people). Each caravanner will carry with him/her a utensil, a recipient, a receptacle related to water or sanitation.

The caravan will have to reach at least 100 villages which do not have boreholes and where populations drink non-potable water. In each village, the caravanners will carry messages to the political authorities asking them to drill boreholes in the village.

Collection and valorization of the word “water” in world languages [RESEARCH ACTIVITY]

This research was conducted on more than five hundred languages: as a result, in African languages, water is said in one or two syllables. A socio-linguistic analysis of the word water demonstrates that it is very short, full of many similarities in terms of sounds, and in relation to geographical proximity. These results raise existential and holistic questions that a museum such as the Saaba Water Museum will have to address in high level discussion circles.

The “LAMPEDUSA” canoe or the rejection of illegal migration of African youth on the seacoasts [EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY]

Pupils, students, young professionals or unemployed Africans express their sensitivities, views, anxieties and worries on a canoe. They denounce with bitter images and virulent words the inability of the African political authorities to assume the destiny of their continent in search of jobs, democracy, freedom and equality, good governance. They say: “No, we young Africans refuse to die on the sea coasts because Europe is not an Haven”.

In this educational activity, the canoe “LAMPEDUSA” is used to sensitize young people, parents of young people, political leaders, artists on illegal migration.

” LAMPEDUSA “is an advocacy tool for African and European political leaders.

The World Cup of Toilets and the longest hand washing line up [EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY]

Visitors and especially primary school students are invited to shoot a ball, in order to score the goal (the goal means defecating in the hole of the latrine). If the shooter scores, this means that s/he is a good user of the toilet. Otherwise, s/he receives a red card from the referee, proof that s/he is a bad user of the latrine.

The shooter is obliged to wash his/her hands after the shootout. A long line of shooters starts washing their hands. Each hand washer sends a message or makes a commitment to good hygiene practices.