Chapter 479: Episode 12 I Hate Doing the Dishes

Novatopia was a reddish-brown land perpetually blasted by the sun. At midday, the radiated and reflected heat raised the surface temperature to 50 degrees Celcius. It was indeed like a giant frying pan. The only vegetation was a desert shrub like tamarisks and piroteknis and sturdy grass like Stipa calamagrostis.

At the beginning of the development of Novatopia, Mu Ssang had assured that 25,000 square kilometers of the reddish-brown desert can be turned into a lush green forest.

Captain Pellpeng, the head of the aquifer probing team, took Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in Libya as examples and opposed the plan. Even if they found an aquifer that could water the 25,000 square kilometers of land, the construction cost was going to be astronomical.

Mu Ssang’s forte was his brute force and optimism. Mu Ssang had told Pellpeng and Ombuti.

[Ennedi is not a Libyan desert. I am not Gaddafi. Have you tried?]

That “Have you tried?” became the trigger of the Project Forestation (faire fleurir le désert). Unfortunately, no one remembered that original name.

The project, originally named by Orifice, was renamed “Blue Art, Blue Art, le Désert” the next day, which sounded quite childish. Mu Ssang had thought the original name was hard to pronounce and no one dared object to the boss’s idea. Blue Art was the name of a paper-producing company in Korea.

Humanity achieved explosive prosperity in the last 200 years or so with the boldness that first tried what seemed impossible. Nothing is impossible in the world. One just didn’t know how to do it yet.

The Project Forestation, like Mu Ssang had assured, began to turn the reddish-brown land green. On the preliminary roads that ran across the entire land, the first facilities to be built were schools. Mu Ssang had a firm belief that ignorance and illiteracy birthed slavery and discrimination.

Children from eight to 12 years were prohibited from laboring. Adolescents from 13 to 18 years were obliged to study for six hours and labor for four hours every day. Adults from 19 years onward were obliged to study for two hours and labor for eight hours every day.

Novatopia’s law and order were simple and strictly enforced. [Someone who doesn’t work shouldn’t eat.] [Someone who works will be rewarded.] Such banners flew in each construction field. Women and the elderly were not exempt. Even the crippled, if they could move their limbs, had to help, moving dirt in the least.

The project advanced in many places simultaneously. Heavy equipment and manpower were poured on the land in which there were only gravel and sand. Dozens of kilometers of roads were paved overnight. Waterways were made. Trees covered the ground to block the wind. Pasture was made. Farms were built. Water ran through the forest and sprinklers worked in the pasture. A great illusion was being constructed in the Eastern Desert.

The constructions that consumed most of the resources and manpower were the waterways and roads.

Professor Shernion divided Novatopia into twelve sections. One avenue ran from east to west. Six streets ran from north to south. Combined, they formed a lattice. Envisioning future traffic, avenues had six lanes and streets four.

The roads in Africa were in horrible conditions. Above 13 degrees North Latitude, where the Sahel Belt started, no regional borders existed and lands were not named. When there was no road, there was no city. The European colonists only exploited Africans and did not invest in the infrastructure.

Each European colonizer only developed a few major cities and built airports nearby. Two kilometers of landing strips were cheaper than 1,000 kilometers of roads to build. Instead of cars or trains, airplanes took ivory, gold, copper, wood, diamonds, rare animals and plants, and natural rubber from Africa to Europe.

Back then or now, airplanes were a special means of movement. The indigenous farmers or ranchers could not use them. Airplanes were suited for exploitation and ruling. To the local people, they were simply noisy lumps of metal that flew in the sky.

With poor road conditions, cities do not develop properly. When there was no city, there was no market in which excess agricultural products and goods were exchanged. When there was no free movement of goods, prices soared. The people in the Sahel were starving to death and excess crops rotted in warehouses in Doba. Farmers that couldn’t accumulate wealth with trade could not buy expensive fertilizers or equipment. Poor infrastructure thus perpetuated poverty.

Professor Shernion, an expert in urban development, knew better than anyone else the relationship between a city’s progress and its infrastructure. He persuaded Ombuti to invest half of the available resources in road construction. Ombuti, who was usually stingy, had to concede that it was an important task. As development advanced, it was hard to meet the demand for equipment and resources with airplanes alone.

Money indeed was powerful. In mere six months, the Western Highway of 1,000 kilometers, that connected N’Djamena to Jipoon Dari, was built. It was quick but not so surprising. The Sahara was not Korea. There were no existing buildings or houses to settle, like Korea.

No land needed to be compensated. No environmental effects needed to be evaluated. There were no existing residents to begin with, who may have demanded more compensation or even protested. The only residents were rattlesnakes and lizards.

No bridges were needed. No tunnels either. They only had to level the ground, pour dirt on top of it, and tamp it down with a roller. That made a usable road. They needed to cover it with asphalt and paint the central line, but as it was, the Western Boulevard was one of the roads in Africa with the best conditions.

With the opening of the Western Highway, the development of Novatopia was even more heightened. The resources, provided by the French government unconditionally, coursed through the Western Highway. N’Djamena was full of unemployed people. They became abundant manpower which also moved through the Highway.

Professor Shernion, after completing the construction of the Western Highway, put his hands on the construction of the Eastern Highway. The Eastern Highway connected the junction at the end of the avenue, to Pada, then to Bahay, which was a border town near Sudan.

Shernion had the ambition to develop Novatopia into a hub of transit trade that connected the Red Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Eastern Highway was going to be a conduit that would grant Novatopia access to the Red Sea, through northern Darfur.

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When Professor Shernion breathed dirt on the road construction sites, Professor Orifice breathed sandstorms on the border. The project was inherently a forestation of a desert. The first step of that was to make a line of trees that will withstand the wind.

Professor Orifice, within a month, analyzed the precipitation of the past 20 years in Novatopia and the Ennedi Plateau, the frequency of the Harmattan, and direction of the sandstorms, and temperatures. The data was already available in the DGSE technological department and office of meteorology.

The analysis of the soil was also complete. The Ennedi Plateau was mostly a stratum of granite in which was exposed a stratum of sandstone, and mainly a clay colloid mixed with sand. If they stopped leaching by providing sufficient water, plants could easily root there.

The combined borders of Novatopia were 750 kilometers long. He calculated the required area of the windbreak forest at 300 meters wide and 490 kilometers long. The size was unheard of in history. Also, few such forests were planted in a desert. No government was that stupid to waste resources in such a project that promised no real benefit.

Professor Orifice was an expert in such stupidity. Even he couldn’t have done it without a sufficient supply of underground water. The project was that massive.

Orifice divided the area into four sections and named them the First Maginot Line, the Second Maginot Line, the Third Maginot Line, and the Fourth Maginot Line. He named them Maginot because he wished the windbreak forest to block the sandstorm as the original Maginot Line deterred the enemy. Also, the original Maginot Line was also 750 kilometers long. The Novatopian Windbreak Forest Project, later named the Saharan Maginot Line, began like that.

Jatropha was the main species of the trees planted in the project. Orifice used heavy equipment to plant a tremendous number of jatropha, which was native to Agbaya and the Ennedi Plateau, along the Lines.

Jatropha was a fast-growing tree. With sufficient water, it grew three meters in eight months. It bore fruit in 12 months and in 15 months, it grew to six meters tall. It was a wide-leafed tree that thrust many branches and leaves. There was no finer tree than this for the formation of the windbreak forest.

Orifice, then, hadn’t expected the fruits of jatropha to make a great profit later. Jatropha’s fruits couldn’t even be used as cattle fodder because of their peculiar smell and toxicity. The useless fruits proved to be a great substance to make biodiesel. No one knew then. A fortunate one was bound to continue to collect a fortune.

The whole Maginot Lines needed 20,000,000 trees in total. Jatropha alone couldn’t make that number. Orifice planted olive trees, white broms, tamarisks, acacias, pirotekni, and apricots with Stipa Calamagrostis, a sturdy grass native to the Ennedi area, to protect the soil.

The entire Project Forestation, which was slow in the beginning, began to advance at a fast pace after Sang Chul brought a massive amount of equipment from Korea and the population of Novatopia grew.

Within a year, the First and Second Maginot Lines, which faced the Sahara, were completed. A total of 10,500,000 trees were planted along 250 kilometers of 490 kilometers. Wild jatropha, widely distributed in Agbaya, were no longer seen.

Currently, the Maginot Lines involve 300 trucks, 60 excavators, 20 bulk pulchers, and 10,000 people. Orifice employed all available trucks to bring jatropha from the Ennedi Plateau and the Sahel in the direction of Paya. The outer part of Novatopia turned green at a surprising speed.

Afwerki was not idle. Tasked with water facilities, he became a workaholic. Day and night, he buried water pipes, until his face paled, his lips cracked, and his eyes glazed over. Still, he was happy.

Of 3,000 people who escaped Eritrea with him, 800 were working in the same job as him. They dug the ground and buried pipes. They no longer feared for life. They ate, learned, and worked. It was the heaven Afwerki had envisioned.

Of the 3,000 people, 2,000 were children below the age of 13. He saved the 2,000 futures of his people and is continuing to do so. Afwerki, after suffering severely from the Ombuti virus, renounced his religion.

Bakri Jadir’s father, Ali Jadir, also played a part. He was tasked with pasture formation with elderly people, women, and children. After school, the children and adolescents made lattice structures that hold the soil in place and the elderly and women sowed grass seeds.

Sturdy native species like Acutiflora, Cornulaca monacanta, and Stipa calamagrostis were mainly for holding the soil in place. To make it more fertile, beans and grass such as tall fescue and alfalfa were sown. When the soil was relatively stabilized, rossgrass, in the family of Poaceae, bahiagrass, and dallisgrass.

When water and fertilizers were abundant, the sun no longer killed the plants but nurtured them. The Jipoon Dari area was already green up to the horizon.

There was another person who toiled hard. Professor Loren Giz, an old friend of Mu Ssang. He joined Novatopia with 10 doctors and 30 nurses from Médecins sans frontières. Roman Walter, who was crushing on Edel, joined too. Of course, he had no idea that the bloody man he met at the time was the owner of Jipoon Dari now.

On a hill overlooking Lake Yoa stood a two-story prefab building. Within 300 meters around the building, except for a guard post. It was the maximum valid range of an assault rifle and an RPG-7 without a dot sight.

Such an arrangement could only be for the security of its residents. Despite the heavy security, the building itself is a cheap prefab made with sandwich panels. It looked and was cheap but the terrace on the second floor, extruding into the lake, had a classy ambiance with its potted Ixora chinensis, seemingly reflecting the owner’s taste.

The Saharan wind from the northwest rippled Lake Yoa and rocked two unoccupied rocking chairs. It was a leisurely sight.

The door to the terrace opened abruptly. A wide-eyed, slender-faced young woman came out onto the terrace with a mop and a duster. Hotpants and a T-shirt with half-length sleeves revealed Bassel’s skin. A woman was prone to change. Bassel was no longer that girl who wore a niqab and glanced around in fear.

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