Emancipation through integration. Access to drinking water and food in the Guéra region, in rural central Chad.

Between the 16th and the 20th century, the Guéra region has been a slave-reservoir for the neighbouring Muslim sultanate of Wadai. Local people used to hide in the mountains in order to flee Wadai razziah. Therefore, when the French conquered and appeased the region in the 1920s, they found a very scattered ethnic and social landscape. In 1923 the French colonial government administratively organized the territory, appointing a customary chief for every local ethnic group. The colonial and postcolonial states were building upon these customary authorities, which still play a crucial political role. The people locally stigmatized as slave- descendants, called Yalnas, got a customary chief and were integrated in the state machine, while the other stigmatized group, the blacksmith, called Haddad in local language, could not have their customary authorities and remain at the margin of the state. This paper shows how the integration in the state machine through customary authorities is a clue condition, nowadays, to control resources as water wells and cereal banks. In a context where the main health issues are malnutrition and diseases related to polluted water consumption, the ethnic belonging harshly affects health conditions. Through examples of different water wells and cereal banks in villages around Guéra, the paper will present the different dynamics behind the access to these resources, showing how Yalnas were quite effective in getting access to them despite their stigma, while Haddad have a much more difficult access to both drinking water and staple food. This case shows the complexity of health policies in rural contexts and its strong link with local politics dynamics.