The Woman Who Carries Water
More than twenty million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of dying from starvation due the drought. In Ethiopia, each year as many as 250,000 children die from hunger and malnutrition. In 1994, the country faced a total collapse of its infrastructure. More than eighty percent of the population lived off the land. Harvests of crops such as maize and groundnuts were largely gone, and thousands of cattle and other livestock had been parched with thirst. Also, most of the natural springs had dried up. However, people from all around the globe either pleaded ignorance or said, "It is none of my responsibility." But we are all brothers one of another, so we are obliged in conscience to help each other. I'd forgotten that I had even taken the Ethiopian volunteer recruitment test when that call came on a cold January day in 1994. Then, standing in a battered wooden telephone booth in my military quarters in Cologne, Germany, I heard someone say, "Congratulations. You've been accepted." Finally, I was a volunteer in Ethiopia.During a period of six weeks, we built up new artesian well pumps 200 kilometers southwest of Djibouti. It was no typical dry season, but the continued aridness had left its mark in this region. Pum
I have volunteered in this East African village for six weeks, but cannot even balance something solid, like a mango, on my head, let alone a pot filled with liquid. When I lug my ten liter plastic jug of water to my house by hand, it is only a hundred meters, but the container is heavy and unwieldy. Changing the jug from one hand to the other helps, but it is a change necessary every twenty meters. Handles do not balance. On your head, the water is symmetrical like the star on top of a Christmas tree. Because my life has never depended on it, I have never learned to balance. What I do know is that the whole experience made me adventurous and eager for more. For more culture, more countries, more languages, more roads and vistas, more smells, sounds, and experiences, beyond those of my own country. My time in Ethiopia and my knowledge in the Air Force gave me a perspective from which to understand attitudes toward time, to appreciate the slowness of the Ethiopian people, and to understand that there is more than one right way to do things, including carrying water. It was a heady invitation, asking not what your country could do for you, but what you could do for your country. Here was something I could do. p water, everyone knows, is clean. Drinking well water will make
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 863
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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