The average American uses a hundred gallons of water every day; Aylito Binayo uses two and a half if she is lucky. Binayo lives in the village of Foro, in the Konso district of Ethiopia. Like nearly 900 million other people in the world, she does not have access to clean water. Three times a day, every day, she walks to the Toiro River to fetch water, as do all the other women in her village. Like most girls, she dropped out of school at eight years old so she could begin collecting water. Very young boys fetch water only up to the age of seven or eight. Fetching water is women’s work.
National Geographic Magazine’s April issue focuses entirely on water: its scarcity, its inhabitants, the part it plays in rituals, and the wars that will be made over it in the near future. One article is a reminder that many issues that do not appear to be about women on the surface are women’s issues nonetheless. The piece – The Burden of Thirst – is available on the National Geographic Magazine website, along with photos and video commentary.
The need to fetch water for the family is the main reason very few women in Konso have attended school. “When we are born, we know that we will have a hard life,” Aylito Binayo says. If she is able to access it, she will carry 12 gallons of water—a hundred pounds—on her back when she walks home from the river. The water is not treated, so waterborne disease is rampant. Even the health center in Konso’s capital lacks clean water. Binayo washes her hands with water “maybe once a day,” she says, and washes her body occasionally. She washes clothes once a year. I’ve been taking my water for granted.
Bringing clean water close to people’s homes is key to improving health outcomes and uplifting women. It would mean girls can go to school and choose a better life. Wells are the best hope some villages have. If they are installed near the river, the water will still be far away, but it is more reliable, cleaner, and easier to extract. Yet many villages where wells are feasible do not have them. In many countries, as in Ethiopia, water is the responsibility of each district, and local governments have little expertise or money. “People who live in slums and rural areas with no access to drinking water are the same people who don’t have access to politicians,” says Paul Faeth, president of Global Water Challenge, a consortium of 24 nongovernmental groups based in Washington, D.C.
WaterAid, one of the world’s largest water-and-sanitation charities, is trying to bring water to some of the villages of Konso. WaterAid asks the community to form a WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) committee of seven people—four of whom must be women. The committee works with WaterAid to plan projects and involve the village in construction and maintenance. The Konso villagers, for instance, own and control their pumps. At the health center, WaterAid installed gutters on the roofs of the buildings to catch rainwater. The water is now being treated and used in the health center.
By March, WaterAid planned to install a motorized pump to push water up the mountain to a reservoir. Gravity would carry it back down to taps in local villages—including Foro. The village would have two community taps and a shower house for bathing. If things went as planned, Aylito Binayo would have a faucet with safe water practically right outside her door.
“I don’t know whether to believe it will work. We are on top of a mountain, and the water is down below,” she says. “But if it works, I will be so happy, so very happy.”
So the washing machines in my building have been shut down for 4 weeks while a new water line to the basement is installed. Also, we have not had much hot water because it affects the water feed to the boiler. The lady across the hall and I griped about it in the elevator last night.
Now I feel ashamed I was complaining at all.
Really interesting, SarahMC. It’s something we view as so “other” in this country and for good reason and yet,
My college boyfriends mother grew up dirt poor in rural Indiana. They didn’t have indoor plumbing. His older sister remembers going over to her grandparents house and being given a bath and the water had to be pumped and then literally heated on the stove and poured into a tub. This was in the late 70s. His Grandfather physically and sexually abused his Grandmother their entire married life, his mother left the house the day she graduated high school, she had saved up to get a down payment on a place in Fort Wayne where she found a union job. She was able to escape the cycle because of the public school system and unionized labor that gave her a better life. Obviously this is nowhere near as extreme as the situations you mention above but I think it shows that with the proper investments in infrastructure and education people can move forward.
Great story, SMC! I don’t get NatGeo, but they do some great reporting.
Also: A hundred gallons of water per day? Really? Dude, I’m going to have to start assessing my usage.
Thank you for this. I’d also like to add a note about the significant risk of sexual assault that this women face every day, especially in areas of displacement like the camps of Sudan, the DRC, Rwanda, and Chad, where going out for water or fire wood is a direct threat to life and limb. Bandits, soldiers, and other persons attack these women and girls as they attempt to provide for their families. In addition to the numbers of women and girls who would be able to spend that time getting an education, both helping them better provide for their families and make an economic contribution to their communities, safe access to clean water will spare so many families any further traumatic experiences (to say nothing of unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and exile of the “spoiled” victim that often follows a rape in these situations).
Thank you for bringing our attention to this story, SarahMC. Joining Engineers Without Borders is something I’d been toying with for the future and this seems like a great reason to do so. Basic water pumping, filtration, and purification systems are well-understood technologies and not as expensive as some other infrastructure projects (especially power plants). Hmm. Sometimes I think we get so distracted by the things that are on the cutting edge that it’s easy to forget not everyone has the basics yet.
When you come down to it, most quality-of-life issues are women’s issues. I wonder if the ‘baggers would appreciate this kind of lack of government “interference” in their lives.
Downed power lines from summer storms were common place where I grew up in rural West Michigan. Without power, the pump for the well didn’t work. One year, when the power was down for several days, we went to the cemetary down the street and used the hand pump to fill 5-gallon buckets and brought them home. After that, my parents bought a generator so we wouldn’t ever have to ‘go through that’ again.
At the very least, I’m going to redouble my efforts at water conservation around the house and check out this WaterAid organization. Thanks for the info!
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