Ethiopia: Water trucks and donkeys fight against drought
Published: Aug 8, 2016 Reading time: 2 minutes
People in Need has been implementing an Emergency WASH intervention for drought-affected kebeles of East Belesssa Woreda, which is located in North Gondar Zone of Amhara Region in Northern Ethiopia. In this area Communities are highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, in recent years, rainfall is becoming more erratic and droughts are more frequent.
The lack of water is also affecting the communities’ access to basic services such as education and health. School drop outs are increasing and teachers have started to leave their jobs due to the water shortages.
With its emergency project PIN has carried out seven main activities to give rapid response to that devastating situation of the community in seven kebeles of the Woreda. The activities were; water trucking (11,000 BNF), distribution of donkeys with saddle (128 BNF), and distribution of Jerry cans (505), rehabilitation of shallow wells and springs (12), hygiene promotion,water scheme management capacity building and distribution of soap, logistical support and scabies treatment campaign.
“We sometimes feel as if we are still dreaming, it’s a miracle that we are able to get water nearby without going that far. What can we say? We simply bless the people who did this for us. We are now happy that all that challenges went away. We can now find pure water within 5 minutes. That’s a dream come true.”
A Woman from Chikar kebele
There is nothing more exciting than observing a little smile and happiness on people who are under difficult circumstances and when that happiness and relief are the result of your project it makes the excitement double. This is what we witnessed through our emergency project in East Belesa. Women who were supposed to travel 8 hours on average to get water for their families, due to the drought are now raining their blessings on the project team. They start spending their time with their families and most importantly going to schools. Most of the women used to spend one third of their day travelling to and back from the water sources during that drought time, they don’t even had time to have their meals properly and feed their families as well.
“We didn’t breast feed our babies properly since we were away from home for a quite long time. Even after we came back and try to feed the babies, it was a real struggle that we don’t have milk since we ourselves don’t eat anything the whole day. Now it all went away, it’s just a bad memory”.
