Update from Ethiopia

Well, it’s hard to believe that I’ve almost been here in Ethiopia for two weeks!!!  It has certainly been an action-packed time and I’ve hit the ground running with the work that I’m doing.  The first five days that I was in country I was with David Harding, the Director of WiLi, as well as his wife Merrie and daughter Merrie Grace.  I’m thankful that we had this overlap time, and we conducted many crucial meetings.  Here in Ethiopia, and I think pretty much everywhere, so much is about relationships so it was key for me meet many people that we work with and have David introduce me.  We met with the leaders and field staff of our partners here including Tearfund (an NGO out of the UK) and the Ethiopian Kale Heywot Church.  Non-stop meetings also meant nearly non-stop consumption of delicious Ethiopian coffee which helped to overcome my jet-lag :)

Me and the Hardings

It’s an interesting experience to navigate meetings where I am usually the only female, one of the only foreigners, and also one of the youngest people in the room!  Many barriers are created, the strongest of which I find to be the language barrier (all the more motivation to learn Amharic!), that make it challenging to communicate clearly and effectively.  However, that’s all part of the job and it’s also a rewarding experience to cross these cultural and lingual barriers through careful conversation, laughter, and often interpretation!

After these initial few days of meetings I quickly departed from the Hardings to head south to Finchawa, a small town in the Oromia region of southern Ethiopia.  I traveled to Finchawa with our Well Drilling Manager Solomon, and a Hydrogeologist that we contract with Kabede.  Both of these guys are extremely skilled at what they do and it’s been a huge learning process for me to work alongside them!  We had a couple of goals while in Finchawa.  WiLi recently completed a series of wells in Finchawa so we visited each of these sites to check on the condition of the well and for documentation purposes.  We also met with the Woreda (local government) Water Bureau to coordinate our activities, and also surveyed for possible future drilling sites.

Kabede and Solomon inspecting a well

Finchawa is in the Borena Zone of southern Ethiopia which was hit extremely hard by the drought in 2011.  The people in this area are agro-pastoralists who rely heavily on the land and its resources for their livelihoods.  We spent 3 long days off-roading and bouncing through the hills and villages surrounding Finchawa!  Pavement was a thing of the past and red clay trails eventually led to simple footpaths that we followed to remote villages.  How our guide from the local church knew where we were I have no idea, but eventually we would pull up near a well site and quickly draw a crowd.

 

Hesitant and inquisitive stares

I don’t know that I can even put to words what it’s like for me to visit these wells.  There is such a stark contrast between the dusty and dry red clay land and the clean water that springs from the pumps of the wells.  Families that previously used hand-dug wells or ponds for their water source, often traveling kilometers to get it, now access clean water in their community.  The shy smiles and inquisitive stares of the community members at the wells quickly dissolved into exuberance and laughter as we talked and checked on the wells.

The community members, often expressing thanks to God, expressed how this clean water has lifted their burdens, promoted the health of their families, and improved their overall life.  The change and transformation that clean water brings to these families and communities is so evident and it is a blessing to witness.  I know that this is the way it’s supposed to be.  Water is meant to be a blessing to people, not a curse.  It is meant to bring life and health, not death and disease.  It’s a wonderful privilege for me to be a small part of the work that is striving to redeem this relationship and allow people in Ethiopia to have access to life-giving clean water.