By Kari Costanza, World Vision communicator

South of Addis Ababa is a place where thousands of men, women and children jockey for water every day, from a handful of water holes in a limestone canyon. The time it takes to collect water takes its toll on families, especially the children, who would rather be in school.

At first glance, it might look like a vacation spot. The sky is wide and bright blue. High walls of limestone shimmer in the sun. Along one wall, the branches of a fig tree cascade toward earth, bound by a tangle of long roots. It feels like the Grand Canyon. You might save for years to take the family on vacation in a place such as this.

But the scene changes near the fig tree when a camel comes galumphing by, laden with dirty yellow jerry cans. Donkeys begin their slow, steady walk down the path. Cattle tread carefully among the rocks. And children, each carrying a yellow plastic container, stream toward the fig tree. Four monkeys watch the activity with interest from tops of the high limestone walls. They’re waiting their turn.

Slaves to water

It takes Lema Kebede, 13, an hour-and-a-half to get water. Every two days, the seventh grader leaves home at six a.m. to get water for drinking and washing clothes. He abhors its filth. “People wash in this water. Monkeys drink from this water. Donkeys drink from this water. Cows drink from this water. Camels drink from this water. It makes me sad, because it is not clean,” he says.

All the children at the water hole today agree that this water is unacceptable. They begin to shout their feelings about the water and what it does to their bodies: “You can get sick because of the germs,” one child says.

And, they say, it’s too far away. “I would get to study my books if I didn’t have to fetch water,” says another. Lema wants to be a doctor. “I want to treat my people,” he says. He goes to the afternoon shift of school, which means he can spend his mornings at the watering hole. “People sometimes fight over the water—both children and adults,” he reports. 

The water hole, he says, can be a very unhappy place. “Sometimes they hit each other, especially the children. When there is less water, the fighting intensifies.” He has never been in a fight himself, but he has witnessed them and he doesn’t like it. “It’s not good to see people fighting and hitting each other.”

Worke Ifa, 15, says she sometimes waits six hours for water. “During the dry season, when the water gets smaller, we have to wait longer hours.”

“I have no choice but to miss school,” she says. “It affects my grades.” Worke is in grade six and ranked fifth in her class, but says she could be at the top. “If I didn’t have to get water, I could study harder and then get better grades.”

When Worke is late to class, it causes problems. “I am not comfortable fetching water,” she says. “It takes time. The teacher is not happy when we are late. She gets angry.” But Worke must do it. Her family needs water to survive. And her family is so poor, they only have two jerry cans for water. That means that Worke has to come more often than other children. “How often you come depends on your wealth,” she says. “If you don’t have money, you come every day.”

Worke is smart and ambitious. She wants to be an airline hostess someday. “I will enjoy it. I will learn so much. I’d love to be in the sky.”

What she wants now is a source of water nearby. “I will get time to study and do other things. It would bring my dream closer,” she says. Having a clean source of water is but a dream in many places in Ethiopia. And in many places, lack of water or filthy water becomes a family’s nightmare.

Bringing clean water closer

Every year in Ethiopia, 250,000 children die because of water and sanitation-related issues.
Sixty per cent of the country’s disease burden comes from poor water and sanitation, says Abraham Asmare, Associate Director for World Vision Ethiopia’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Program.

Ethiopia has a population of 80 million people. Eighty five per cent live in rural areas. Of those, 90 per cent are poor. In rural areas, only one in four has access to water. Only eight per cent have access to sanitation—the worst ratio in the world.

World Vision has big plans for Ethiopia. By 2015, the organization hopes to increase the number of people with water in rural areas to 62 per cent and cover 54 per cent of the rural population with sanitation. That’s 340,000 more people with potable water and 170,000 more people with sanitation.

The challenges are many: rising costs of equipment, the capacity of drilling machines, and the depth at which water resides—300 meters below the ground.

But World Vision is committed to finding solutions. In this community, the government has requested that World Vision run pipelines from the Awash River to bring clean water for drinking and washing in 2010.

And, while 2010 may seem far away, the thought of nearby, clean, livestock-free water brings the dreams of the children in this community that much closer—dreams of medicine and air travel are now as firmly rooted to the earth as the fig tree at the water hole.

Author’s note: There were five similar water holes in this area on which more than 5,000 people count for water every day. The week after we visited the water hole at the fig tree, it began to disappear, leaving only four holes to drink from.