Our journey began on a Wednesday morning with strong assurances from our friends at Glimmer that we would be back in Addis by the afternoon. We were a little skeptical and somewhat surprised - our visit to various Glimmer project sites last year had involved a 2 day excursion beginning with a stop at the community of Adamitu not far from Zeway and culminating with a visit to a school in the Southern region the following day. Nevertheless, our hosts continued to reassure us that we would be back in Addis in time to prepare ourselves for attending one of the many pre (or post, they all become a blur at some point) wedding events which we also had commitments towards as so many other Ethiopian expats do on their annual pilgrimage.                  

We started out going north from Addis on 'Asmara Menged' or what has been renamed lately to Haile Gebreselassie Boulevard. Pretty soon we had left the outskirts of the city and the congested, tightly packed streets of Addis had started giving way to open fields and scattered dwellings along the road. The road that took us out of town was in surprisingly good condition and in fact looked like it had recently been paved, no doubt a component of the large scale infrastructure improvements being undertaken throughout the country. We were no more than 50 km away from the center of Addis before we stopped at a compound by the side of the road and spoke with additional folks from the local development association as well as the local administrative authority. After picking up a guide, we then proceeded to turn around and head back in the direction we had come from (towards Addis) before turning off on a gravel road that also happened to be the route towards 'Legedadi' - one of the 3 reservoirs from which most of the drinking water for Addis Ababa and its environs, come. Very soon we came to the end of the gravel road at a turn off for a military base as well as the actual reservoir and proceeded to go off road safari style. This turned out to NOT be a lot of fun despite the pretty decent LandCruiser we were housed in.                  

In our estimates, we continued beyond the turn off for the reservoir (and the end of the gravel road) for another 4-5 km in an agonizingly slow, rough and sometimes very precarious (with our SUV seemingly balanced at 45+ degree angles) manner. Along the way we passed landscapes dotted with groups of huts here and there and characterized by a dry vista (although we weren't really in the 'dry season'). As we progressed on our journey, the stark reality of life in this area began to hit home and with it the absolute necessity for the water projects that we intended to fund in this area and others. One of the first instances that was so illustrative of these problems was when we came across a woman filling 4 jerry cans with water from a ragged depression in the ground. The water was obviously not fit for even livestock to drink (and it was obvious in many cases that cattle had been drinking from the same sources that woman and children took water from) - many people later remarked after seeing the pictures I took from that scene, that the there seemed to be a problem with the picture in that there was too much light reflecting off the water. But the picture was not the problem. The water itself had a milky, opaque look with a significant amount of white sediment clearly visible just below the surface. And yet we watched as the woman filled and began carrying the jerry cans which she had just filled with water, back to the group of huts immediately beyond the depression.                      

We passed by many such 'depressions' in the ground that were being extensively used by residents of the area from which to extract water into jerry cans which we were told would in fact be used for drinking. In one case, we actually observed cattle drinking directly from the same water which a small boy had just filled his jerry can from. Further on, an even more disconcerting sight - a group of little children, no more than 8-10 years of age carrying a jerry can in fits and starts from a puddle of water that was worse than anything we had seen yet. This puddle had a sickly yellow green hue and it seemed unimaginable to us that it could even be remotely used for anything at all much less as drinking water for human beings. Yet, we were fast coming to realize that in many cases, this is indeed the face of poverty in Ethiopia. Because it's not necessarily true that those in dire need are far, far away from the cities and townships of Ethiopia where at the very least it's not too hard to find some relatively clean drinking water. The proximity of this particular community to the prodigious amounts of water present at the Legedadi dam just a few kilometers a day is testament that many other factors - such as the lack of widespread infrastructure - come into play in preventing such communities from having access to the clean water they need. And without which, many of their inhabitants fall prey to all manner of diseases and spend so much time in search of this most precious of commodities.                     

Eventually we had to stop and dismount due to extremely inhospitable terrain which even the capable SUV we were in could no longer navigate even at the snail's pace to which we had been reduced for the past 20 minutes or so. We decided that we would walk for a bit longer in our efforts to visit the communities of Didibissa, Gurajidda and Berecha. The latter (Berecha) would be one of the communities at which YAGForLife would fund a water project.                     

While we were not able to make it that far, we inspected some hand dug water holes nearby which are generally the basis for a pump based water project. These water holes are generally about 1-1.5m in diameter. In order to sink a pump into one of these, they are extended to a depth of 15m or beyond and the bottom area filled with gravel to provide some level of filtering. Often, there is some difficulty in determining how far it is possible to dig these holes as factors such as location of water tables, whether they are dynamic or static and rock strata beneath the surface can have an impact on this. Aside from the tactical problems of dealing with a particular water hole is the larger and fundamental problem that creates such a difficult situation for rural communities in general - that of transportation & accessibility. After seeing first hand how difficult it was for us to get the general area of Berecha, we were hard pressed to visualize how the materials for a project (water pump, cement, tools, etc) could make it to the project site. We have nothing but admiration and appreciation for those who will eventually implement the project and the obstacles they must overcome in doing so even given external funding for it.

While we were talking to some of the locals about the water projects, a number of the local folks in the community came out to greet us in part incented by the offer of t-shirts (left over from our walk) which we had brought with us to give them. What a sight to see as we saw all manner of folks spread out in the immediate landscape around us wearing the distinctive white t-shirts with 'Walk For Life' and our logo emblazoned on each. During this time, we also had an opportunity to speak with one of the village elders who came out to greet us. Ato Nega Birru was probably between 60-70 years of age.                        

His wizened face dark and wrinkled under an elegant but aging fedora hat, he told usehow the villagers have to drink water from the same puddles, craters and watering holes that their cattle also drink from. In any given year, he said, many villagers are taken ill and some die from various afflictions related to the unclean water they drink. As we walked away from Ato Nega, we resolved to look him up on our next visit and find out what difference the water pump had made in his life and that of the villagers.                

We finally decided to head back after taking a bit of time to savor the pure, unspoiled beauty of the Ethiopian countryside, the incredible simplicity of life in its most atomic terms. One cannot help but wax philosophical on the meaning of life and other lofty sounding subjects when faced with the conundrum of polar opposites that is the contrast between life here, in Addis and especially back in the rat race we call life in the US.              

On our way back across the rugged landscape, we came to the 'local' clinic which we had passed earlier and decided to stop by for a visit. The clinic can hardly be called local, it basically a 3 room shack that serves 16 kebeles in the surrounding area. In one of the rooms at the clinic, we saw a chart that listed the top 10 problems that the clinic treats - 7 out of the 10 were mostly a consequence of the unclean water they use for cooking and drinking.                 

As we were walking into the compound, we had met and talked to a mother with her sick child slung over her back. She had just walked 2½ hours to get medical attention for her child. It put our 'difficult' trip in an SUV over rough terrain, in sobering perspective - and reminded us once again of why we must persist in our efforts to help build a stronger Ethiopia - one community at a time.