swales, terraces, check dams, OH MY!
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32348749
Turning Ethiopia's desert green
A generation ago Ethiopia's Tigray province was stricken by a famine that shocked the world. Today, as Chris Haslam reports,
local people are using ancient techniques to turn part of the desert green.
........
They were summoned before dawn by horns, an Old Testament echo calling every able-bodied man and woman over 18 years of age to report for the first of 20 days of compulsory community labour. Their job, quite simply, is to tame the desert.
By 10 in the morning, some 3,000 people have turned up. Using picks, shovels, iron bars and their bare hands, they will turn these treacherous slopes into neat staircases of rock-walled terraces that will trap the annual rains, forcing the
water to percolate into the soil rather than running off in devastating, ground-ripping flash floods.
....................
We take a long, hot hike to a vast pool of cool, green water held back by a huge hand-built dam. "We've built 85 of these check-dams so far," says Aba Hawi, "and you can see how they work. These mini-reservoirs fill up during the rains and are fed by groundwater in times of drought. Now, every farmer has a well." He tosses a handful of dust into the wind. "Ten years ago, that was our land." Then he points at a shimmering blue flash in the reeds. "Now look: we've got malachite kingfishers living in the desert."
maybe Paul needs a ram's horn to get his "ants" motivated