ethiopia. water.
charity: water. ETHIOPIA
November, 2006
- Bulgeta, Ethiopia.
About 5 hours south of Addis Ababa, Bulgeta sits at 6000 feet, and boasts almost that many inhabitants. To get there, your sturdy 4x4 would snake south through Ethiopia's mountains, then turn right at a town called Shone. Thirty minutes later, navigating an impossibly rocky road full of children, cows and donkeys - of push carts loaded with wood and water - you'd pass a primary school where hundreds pack in to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
Moments later, you'd find the water source that served Bulgeta for generations and stole many of its children's lives.
For years, men, women and children drank from the village's large pond. So did their livestock. To the left, trees cover a path that circles it, behind lies a field where the cattle graze. The sloping grass is littered with cow dung and carries waste down its slope to the pond during the rains. The water is filled with green algae and muck, making many sick in Bulgeta.
But like many poor communities in Africa, healthcare is out of reach for most there. Those who could afford treatment at the nearby Shone clinic would be carried on the shoulders of others for antibiotics that cost between 40 and 80 cents. Those that couldn't stayed at home and suffered. Many died with parasitic diseases, some of typhoid, others from dehydration or plain old diarrhea.
The people of Bulgeta knew the water was killing them.
"It is not clean at all," Marcos, one of the village elders told me through a translator in Amharic. "But we have no other solution. We have to drink it." He told me some people used to walk two hours a day to fetch water from the source, and then grabbed his wife and colorful 20 liter jerry cans and jumped in the pond to show me how they used to gather the water.
But not anymore.
Thanks to humanitarian efforts, clean water arrived a month ago in the form of a freshwater well. It cost about $3500 to drill and cast, and now sits on a hill above the pond. It has changed Bulgeta. Able to pump about a million gallons of clean and safe drinking water a year, it has brought hope and health into town. You see, clean water changes everything in Africa. The precious children of Bulgeta are proof of that, crowding the well, eager to show me how clean their water now was. (click here for video)
Dinkanich drinks from Bulgeta's freshwater well spout
I spent 11 days in Ethiopia, and visited many villages like Bulgeta. One of the organizations charity: supports on the ground has drilled more than 150 wells in Ethiopia in the past few years, providing clean water to over 750,000 people.
They are a remarkable team of expatriates and locals. The oldest, John Ed Clark, is a slim 69-year-old man with bushy eyebrows and furrowed brow. He told me that I accompanied him on his 60th trip to the country. He has three more trips planned next year, and says plainly he'll keep coming until he can't.
I learned all about the drilling process and even operated the controls of the 30-year-old rig with expert driller Curt King. We looked for water on the grounds of a deaf school, and I was surprised to learn how involved the process was. A Seattle resident, Curt's been at clean water for almost three decades and reckons he's drilled more than 2000 water wells in his lifetime. He's tall and kind and speaks shyly and softly about his work.
Emotionally, Curt talks of the women and children whom he perhaps best serves, the women he sees often weeping as he finishes a well. Those "without a voice." Curt wants the work to go on when he's unable to continue, and has been training three locals - Solomon, Nigusse, and Demoze, to take his place when he retires.
With our help and funding, Curt and his team seek to transform another 60 communities like Bulgeta in 2007. Curt hopes for 100 wells.
Curt & Solomon laugh at my drilling skills and improper attire.
After leaving our drill team, I traveled more than 1000 miles over the next days to remote, water-stressed parts of the country and saw firsthand Ethiopia's great need for water. I photographed children digging in sand for the precious liquid. I saw hunched women walk torturous miles in the heat with jugs of dirty fluid tied to their backs. I put faces to the country's 45 million+ without access to clean and safe drinking water. The stories I'd like to tell would fill ten newsletters.
Touring a health clinic that served 103,000 people and had no doctors, I watched the administrator flip through the book, seemingly shocked himself at the incidence of waterborne disease. Not quite as high as the often quoted UN number of 80 percent, his clinic still saw about 50 percent. The administrator jumped in our truck and drove us to the local source he said was responsible for the illness. We stared as ponds with cattle and children shared the same drink. Women washed clothes, bathed and drank in the same place. We stood over a small stagnant hole, and I incredulously watched as a young boy in a ragged gray sweatshirt and swollen feet gathered 10 liters. Water is desperately needed here, water is desperately needed in so many places.
You can help.
Support charity: with your gifts over the coming holiday season as we team with those transforming lives of those in need. Your support allows charity: to continue our work to spark greater global awareness about issues surrounding poverty and to connect people with ways they can make a difference. Through our water campaign, our educational exhibitions, special events and $20 charity: water bottle sales, we are committed to bringing clean water into African communities like Bulgeta while building a community of compassion and concern here at home.
Please get involved.
VIEW MORE OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ETHIOPIA HERE
SEE VIDEO FROM BULGETA HERE
donate to charity
buy a $20 bottle of charity: water. build wells.
view our needs list
postscript.
Sulfiso & Tariku
The most special moment for me in Ethiopia wasn't water related, but may have meaning to those of you who served with me on the Mercy Ship, or followed the last two years of patient stories in West Africa. Early one morning last week, I took a walk in the dim morning light just before 6 a.m. and prayed quietly for the day. Moments after I finished, a man strolled out of the bush and joined me on my walk. As I looked into his face, I saw that he had a prominent cleft lip and must have been about 30 years old. I jumped inside, knowing from experience I'd be able to help him, as the nearby Christian hospital in Soddo boasted a world-class surgeon.
We walked for about a kilometer together in the growing dawn, unsuccesfully communicating in language but sharing smiles. He left me finally with a wave, and I took note of where he walked into the bush. Later that afternoon, I tracked him down with a translator and showed him a copy I had of Need Magazine where I'd recently published before and after photos of cleft surgeries done on the Mercy Ship. I learned the man's name was Sulfiso, and he agreed to accept the surgery I'd arranged for. We discussed transport.
Then, a few hours, later, I learned God wasn't happy with just one patient. Two years of experience, and, well I'd better use it I guess. A 9-year-old boy, Tariku, turned up where I was staying and showed me his face. He was shy, bearing the stigma I'd so often seen of the common birth defect. Happily, I was able to schedule Tariku for surgery as well.
But two wasn't enough. On my way back through town a week later, I learned that another three patients had surfaced at the house. Their treatments were arranged as well.
Five lives and faces changed forever by simple 45-minute surgeries that will cost me only about $200 each. It's incredibly humbling.
-scott harrison
November, 2006
- Bulgeta, Ethiopia.
About 5 hours south of Addis Ababa, Bulgeta sits at 6000 feet, and boasts almost that many inhabitants. To get there, your sturdy 4x4 would snake south through Ethiopia's mountains, then turn right at a town called Shone. Thirty minutes later, navigating an impossibly rocky road full of children, cows and donkeys - of push carts loaded with wood and water - you'd pass a primary school where hundreds pack in to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.
Moments later, you'd find the water source that served Bulgeta for generations and stole many of its children's lives.
For years, men, women and children drank from the village's large pond. So did their livestock. To the left, trees cover a path that circles it, behind lies a field where the cattle graze. The sloping grass is littered with cow dung and carries waste down its slope to the pond during the rains. The water is filled with green algae and muck, making many sick in Bulgeta.
But like many poor communities in Africa, healthcare is out of reach for most there. Those who could afford treatment at the nearby Shone clinic would be carried on the shoulders of others for antibiotics that cost between 40 and 80 cents. Those that couldn't stayed at home and suffered. Many died with parasitic diseases, some of typhoid, others from dehydration or plain old diarrhea.
The people of Bulgeta knew the water was killing them.
"It is not clean at all," Marcos, one of the village elders told me through a translator in Amharic. "But we have no other solution. We have to drink it." He told me some people used to walk two hours a day to fetch water from the source, and then grabbed his wife and colorful 20 liter jerry cans and jumped in the pond to show me how they used to gather the water.
But not anymore.
Thanks to humanitarian efforts, clean water arrived a month ago in the form of a freshwater well. It cost about $3500 to drill and cast, and now sits on a hill above the pond. It has changed Bulgeta. Able to pump about a million gallons of clean and safe drinking water a year, it has brought hope and health into town. You see, clean water changes everything in Africa. The precious children of Bulgeta are proof of that, crowding the well, eager to show me how clean their water now was. (click here for video)
Dinkanich drinks from Bulgeta's freshwater well spout
I spent 11 days in Ethiopia, and visited many villages like Bulgeta. One of the organizations charity: supports on the ground has drilled more than 150 wells in Ethiopia in the past few years, providing clean water to over 750,000 people.
They are a remarkable team of expatriates and locals. The oldest, John Ed Clark, is a slim 69-year-old man with bushy eyebrows and furrowed brow. He told me that I accompanied him on his 60th trip to the country. He has three more trips planned next year, and says plainly he'll keep coming until he can't.
I learned all about the drilling process and even operated the controls of the 30-year-old rig with expert driller Curt King. We looked for water on the grounds of a deaf school, and I was surprised to learn how involved the process was. A Seattle resident, Curt's been at clean water for almost three decades and reckons he's drilled more than 2000 water wells in his lifetime. He's tall and kind and speaks shyly and softly about his work.
Emotionally, Curt talks of the women and children whom he perhaps best serves, the women he sees often weeping as he finishes a well. Those "without a voice." Curt wants the work to go on when he's unable to continue, and has been training three locals - Solomon, Nigusse, and Demoze, to take his place when he retires.
With our help and funding, Curt and his team seek to transform another 60 communities like Bulgeta in 2007. Curt hopes for 100 wells.
Curt & Solomon laugh at my drilling skills and improper attire.
After leaving our drill team, I traveled more than 1000 miles over the next days to remote, water-stressed parts of the country and saw firsthand Ethiopia's great need for water. I photographed children digging in sand for the precious liquid. I saw hunched women walk torturous miles in the heat with jugs of dirty fluid tied to their backs. I put faces to the country's 45 million+ without access to clean and safe drinking water. The stories I'd like to tell would fill ten newsletters.
Touring a health clinic that served 103,000 people and had no doctors, I watched the administrator flip through the book, seemingly shocked himself at the incidence of waterborne disease. Not quite as high as the often quoted UN number of 80 percent, his clinic still saw about 50 percent. The administrator jumped in our truck and drove us to the local source he said was responsible for the illness. We stared as ponds with cattle and children shared the same drink. Women washed clothes, bathed and drank in the same place. We stood over a small stagnant hole, and I incredulously watched as a young boy in a ragged gray sweatshirt and swollen feet gathered 10 liters. Water is desperately needed here, water is desperately needed in so many places.
You can help.
Support charity: with your gifts over the coming holiday season as we team with those transforming lives of those in need. Your support allows charity: to continue our work to spark greater global awareness about issues surrounding poverty and to connect people with ways they can make a difference. Through our water campaign, our educational exhibitions, special events and $20 charity: water bottle sales, we are committed to bringing clean water into African communities like Bulgeta while building a community of compassion and concern here at home.
Please get involved.
VIEW MORE OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ETHIOPIA HERE
SEE VIDEO FROM BULGETA HERE
donate to charity
buy a $20 bottle of charity: water. build wells.
view our needs list
postscript.
Sulfiso & Tariku
The most special moment for me in Ethiopia wasn't water related, but may have meaning to those of you who served with me on the Mercy Ship, or followed the last two years of patient stories in West Africa. Early one morning last week, I took a walk in the dim morning light just before 6 a.m. and prayed quietly for the day. Moments after I finished, a man strolled out of the bush and joined me on my walk. As I looked into his face, I saw that he had a prominent cleft lip and must have been about 30 years old. I jumped inside, knowing from experience I'd be able to help him, as the nearby Christian hospital in Soddo boasted a world-class surgeon.
We walked for about a kilometer together in the growing dawn, unsuccesfully communicating in language but sharing smiles. He left me finally with a wave, and I took note of where he walked into the bush. Later that afternoon, I tracked him down with a translator and showed him a copy I had of Need Magazine where I'd recently published before and after photos of cleft surgeries done on the Mercy Ship. I learned the man's name was Sulfiso, and he agreed to accept the surgery I'd arranged for. We discussed transport.
Then, a few hours, later, I learned God wasn't happy with just one patient. Two years of experience, and, well I'd better use it I guess. A 9-year-old boy, Tariku, turned up where I was staying and showed me his face. He was shy, bearing the stigma I'd so often seen of the common birth defect. Happily, I was able to schedule Tariku for surgery as well.
But two wasn't enough. On my way back through town a week later, I learned that another three patients had surfaced at the house. Their treatments were arranged as well.
Five lives and faces changed forever by simple 45-minute surgeries that will cost me only about $200 each. It's incredibly humbling.
-scott harrison
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