Water Day 2013 - Safe Access to Safe Water

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http://www.rescue.org/blog/world-water-day-2013-safe-access-safe-water

WATER DAY 2013 - SAFE ACCESS TO SAFE WATER - WOMEN & GIRLS

By The IRC - March 22, 2013

Photo: Peter Biro/IRC

Today is World Water Day. It’s an opportunity to spotlight the fact that many women and girls in crisis zones worldwide must trek miles every day just to reach clean water. And as they make this difficult journey, they often face the threat of sexual violence.

This story comes from a remote region of Ethiopia on the Somalia border, where local residents share scarce water resources with hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees who fled drought and conflict at home:

Abdiya Abdi Mohamud remembers what it was like before clean water came to Bokolmayo.

Each day the 34-year-old mother of seven would set out from her village, in an arid corner of southeastern Ethiopia, on a round trip journey of more than nine miles across rocky terrain to collect river water. She traveled on foot or by donkey, sometimes filling her water jugs from ponds that appeared after seasonal rainstorms.

Abdiya Abdi Mohamud in her small shop

Abdiya Abdi Mohamud, 34, in her shop in Bokolmayo, Ethiopia. Since the International Rescue Committee built a water system serving a nearby refugee camp and surrounding villages, she no longer risks a dangerous daily journey to collect water for her family.

Photo: Wakene Totoba/IRC

It could be a dangerous trip—Abdiya knows of women who were assaulted along the way—and it took precious time from other important tasks. Children missed school to help collect water for their families.

And for all the risk and sacrifice, the water they lugged back to the village wasn’t good. “It was salty and dirty,” Abdiya recalls. People became sick.

All that has changed since the International Rescue Committee built a water system for a nearby refugee camp, with a pipeline branching out to Bokolmayo. Now Abdiya and nearly 4,700 of her neighbors in surrounding villages need walk only a short distance to turn on a tap.

Now that she no longer spends several hours each day hauling water jugs, Abdiya has been able to add to her family’s income by running a small store selling soap, cosmetics and house wares. She also rents out two rooms as classrooms—and she is thrilled to see the community’s children back in school. And with the new water system, they’re in much better health.

“We are getting pure water,” she says, “and there’s no disease.”