The Yanacocha gold mine is currently operating on 26,000 hectares (about 63,700 acres), high above the city of Cajamarca in the Andes mountains of Peru. But that is just a small area: The government conceded a total of 282,000 hectares (690,000 acres, slightly , larger than the state of Rhode Island) to Minera Yanacocha, a company comprised of majority owners Newmont Mining of the United States and Minera Buenaventura of Peru. Yanacocha continues to be a significant part of Newmont Mining's global production, contributing about a quarter of the 5.3 million ounces of gold Newmont sold in 2007.
Minera Yanacocha is working aggressively to expand the mine. In 2004, the mine began exploring for gold on Cerro Quilish, a small mountain that comprises the top of the watershed supplying the city of Cajamarca and the rest of the valley. Dairy and potato farmers in the area and many others opposed to mining Quilish blocked the road to the mountain in 2004. There were weeks of violent confrontation between police and protesters. In the end, Minera Yanacocha stated publicly that it had underestimated the concerns of local people and asked the Ministry of Energy and Mines to revoke its permit to explore for minerals on Cerro Quilish.
The mountain remains in the mine's concession area. Many of the Quechua-speaking indigenous people in the area consider Quilish their apu, a mountain spirit, and a sacred place. "When the clouds gather above Quilish, we know it will rain," says Nelida Chilon, a 24-year old from Bajo Porcón, midway between the city and the mountain. "We want to protect Quilish, our source of water. The [mining] engineers tell us there is water, and no pollution, but we know the land does not produce as it used to, and there is less water than ever."
Local governments representing communities opposed to mining on Quilish also adopted laws to designate it a protected natural area. Other communities where the mine intends to expand have taken similar measures. Oxfam America's partner GRUFIDES is supporting efforts by local communities to protect their land, and provides training and other support to local people eager to learn about and defend their human rights and protect their water sources. With help from Oxfam America, GRUFIDES is also working with the regional government's environmental management agency to create a land use plan that would clearly designate areas for agriculture, human settlement, mining, and other activities.
Minera Yanacocha is disputing 12 local ordinances that prohibit mining, and plans to expand mining exploitation to these and other areas, including La Zanja, where one person was killed by police during a demonstration in 2004. The environmentally fragile high altitude wetlands of El Solitario, where there are 240 ponds and lakes, is another area of proposed expansion.
Minera Yanacocha is claiming jurisdiction in Lima where the company is officially located and where judges are not familiar with these local areas. Communities are hard pressed to be properly represented in the proceedings due to costs and distance (375 miles). "With that kind of trial you know who is going to win," says Marco Arana, one of the founders of GRUFIDES, Oxfam America's partner in Cajamarca. He added that when legal and institutional roads are closed to citizens, it leads to confrontation, and "adds to the social exclusion and asymmetry of power in Peru."
Oxfam America is supporting the work of GRUFIDES to help local communities defend their rights and create an appropriate land use plan for the region. Oxfam is calling on Minera Yanacocha to:
The pool above the Gonnoruwa anicut is peaceful, cool, and long-awaited. Here, at a bend in the Malarara River, water that pauses above the dam nudges up against the sluice gate of a hand-dug channel.
"In my grandparents' time, my parents' time, and even my time, we had this idea to take water from the river for our crops," says D. A. Ekanayaka, who lives in the village. "All of these people for generations knew they could take water, but they didn't know how."
This is the dry region of Sri Lanka, where irrigation is the lifeblood of agriculture. Although the Malarara River is only a few kilometers from the village of Gonnoruwa, Ekanayaka's parents and grandparents had no way to transport enough water for crops from A to B. The result: crop failures, sometimes four seasons out of five. The villagers were nearly destitute, forced to depend on moneylenders to make up the endless shortfalls.
Then came the tsunami, which took the lives of 60 people in Gonnoruwa and a neighboring community. If the wave had struck on another day of the week, the village would have been spared: Gonnoruwa is 25 kilometers (about 15 miles) inland. But Dec. 26 was market day in the coastal town of Hambantota, and many of those who went to buy and sell never returned.
But when, in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the villagers were offered food handouts by aid agencies, they took the long view: what they needed wasn't food; it was the means to grow it. If you really want to assist us, villagers told aid agencies, help us get water to our crops. Oxfam took them up on it.
A small group of village women took charge of the anicut project. It was they who negotiated with Oxfam, government irrigation authorities, masons, and vendors. And they organized the community to provide labor for jobs like transporting materials and mixing concrete.
But as women stepping into a leadership role normally occupied by men, they were put to the test from day one.
"At the start, the men tried to do some things just to see whether the women would give up. To see whether we had the courage to continue the work," says Mallika Abayakoon.
At home, there were complaints from husbands that the cooking, cleaning, and child care were being neglected; at the construction site, there were refusals to carry out the tasks assigned. But the women were a force to be reckoned with. When men balked at the labor asked of them or the wages offered, the women simply stepped in and did the work themselves—even when it involved heavy jobs like mixing cement.
But they always had the support of a handful of village men, Ekanayaka among them. "They didn't care about food, time, or anything," says Abayakoon. "They were like our fathers, our brothers, our very good friends. They treated us really well."
The anicut was completed in March of 2007, and the village that once struggled to produce a single crop can now grow two a year. What does this mean to the women of Gonnoruwa and their community? They are eating three meals a day; they have pulled themselves out of debt; they can grow rice and home gardens, too; they are building better houses for themselves; they are sending their children for extra classes and helping them continue with higher education.
But the gains don't stop there. The women's husbands—now proud of their wives' huge contribution to the community—support them in new ways.
"Most of the men changed their behavior because of the anicut project," says one of the women. "Now half of the household work is done by my husband, even if I'm at home."
And instead of a handful of men supporting women's leadership in Gonnoruwa, there are now scores.
K. Somawathi is a member of the women's group. She is shy and has a serious look about her, but when asked how it feels to be a respected community leader, she smiled and says, after a pause, "It's unbearable happiness."
]]>There, on the shore behind what's left of a half-constructed mansion, the chug-chug-chug of a diesel pump holds the promise of clean water for 11,042 people at Buhimba camp. They are just some of more than one million villagers forced to flee their homes as conflict has swept across the eastern provinces of that vast country. A short distance away, a second pump, submerged deep in the lake, provides water for an additional 18,016 people in two other camps known as Mugunga I and II.
Without clean water, without decent sanitation, and without the public health outreach that helps people understand the link between the two, waterborne diseases could ripple through theses camps with devastating consequences. That's what Oxfam, together with its local partner, Action Santé Femme, or ASAF, was determined to prevent when it helped establish the water systems for these three camps—and a fourth, Bulengo—outside Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Through a network of rigid plastic pipes, storage tanks, and outdoor faucets, water from Lake Kivu now gushes into the jerry cans of thousands of families with the turn of a tap.
At the top of a short but steep hill at Buhimba, where two massive water storage tanks frame the sprawling camp below, Helene Kanyere Ndakas stands ready with a notebook in hand. She is the manager of this storage station—and knows better than almost anybody the importance of making sure the system runs smoothly.
What gives her that special knowledge?
Ndakas herself relies on the water that flows from it. She and her family are among the thousands of people who are now making their homes temporarily at Buhimba.
Flipping her notebook open, Ndakas points to the careful records she keeps each time she opens the valves to refill the tanks with lake water. And she notes the amount of chlorine that goes in to guarantee its cleanliness. Hired by Oxfam, Ndakas is on water duty from 6am to 4pm each day—a job she takes very seriously.
"People are depending on her," says Charles Mampasu, an Oxfam program manager in Goma. "And they're happy with her job."
In a place where there was little or no infrastructure to support a water system, supplying tens of thousands of people with clean water on an emergency basis has been no small feat. And making sure they continue to have access to it when Oxfam moves on to its next project is one of the organization's central concerns. That's why Oxfam is working hand-in-hand with ASAF to help it build its ability to handle the water system on its own, particularly in Mugunga camps.
A tour through Mugunga I shows how important a steady supply of clean water can be—especially when people are struggling with such harsh living conditions. Built on fields of sharp volcanic rocks, the shelters many people now call home are not even tall enough in which to stand. Made from grasses and dried banana leaves flung over a frame of saplings and topped with a plastic sheet, the huts offer only minimal protection from the elements. To keep warm—and to drive the bugs out—many people cook on small wood fires inside their huts, the smoke curling into their lungs and out through the cracks in the shelter walls.
At the health clinic, the nurse on duty reports that respiratory infections are among the most common medical problems he sees. About 150 people a day flock to the clinic with a host of ailments that also include malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhea. The latter is what the clean water—and scores of latrines that Oxfam has also installed—help to fight.
Snaking across the rocks, over roots, and through the mud, a network of wide black plastic pipes carries the water from Lake Kivu. It's replacing a temporary supply that another agency had been trucking in daily and storing in two plump water bladders—they look like giant egg yokes when full—at a cost of $3,500 a week. Nearby, the water blasts from faucets when kids turn on the taps to fill plastic jugs before lugging them home.
The water jug of choice for many kids has a familiar look: it's the container that once carried their family's allotment of cooking oil, doled out during the regular food distributions that displaced people have no choice but to depend on. Here at Mugunga, nothing goes to waste—not the jugs, and not the precious water they carry.
]]>Byakupita Wabinwa, president of the management committee that oversees the Kabimba health clinic, is standing below the sign. He is a small and serious man with a serious problem—one that plagues not only his community but that crops up frequently in this region of Democratic Republic of Congo: cholera.
Here, in the eastern provinces where years of conflict have taken a toll on social services, outbreaks of the waterborne disease are just one of the consequences of underinvestment in everything from roads, to health clinics, to clean water.
Sometimes, if maintenance of the simple delivery system has been lax, the water at this clinic doesn't run at all. That's why an enormous black cylinder is lying on its side in the clinic's front yard. It's a storage tank, waiting for installation as part of Oxfam's program to help ensure the clinic has a reliable reserve of water as well as decent sanitation facilities. In the back of the yard, a pair of pit latrines and two bathing stalls are under construction. And nearby, deep in the ground, lies the newly dug "placenta pit"—the local solution for disposing of hazardous medical wastes including afterbirth from the maternity ward.
Though it has no doctor and just five nurses, this is a busy place—serving an area with nearly 14,000 people. About 75 make their way here each week—some walking two hours down from the mountains—to receive treatment for malaria, to get tested for tuberculosis, to fight the cholera that erupts from time to time, especially during the rainy season.
Tacked to the door of one of the buildings is a sign, warning with explicit detail in Swahili, about the symptoms of cholera. It urges those who've got them to head for the nearest health clinic as soon as possible.
On this day, there are no cholera sufferers at the Kabimba clinic. But sometimes, during outbreaks, as many as 20 people a week come for treatment, though there is hardly the space for them. People lug their own bedding with them and spread it on the floor. A small building—about 30 feet long by 15 feet wide—serves as a quarantine area.
"But how can you put 20 people in that building and keep them healthy?" asks Wabinwa.
Inside, the walls are grimy with stains and the ceiling is collapsing. Of the original 10 cholera beds—mattresses with holes in the center beneath which buckets can be placed—only three remain. The plastic covering on one of the mattresses has pulled away, exposing the foam around the hole and leaving it like a sponge to sop up germs. A rickety wooden rack serves as a post for the intravenous drip.
As primitive and ill-supplied as the Kabimba clinic is by western standards, Trish Morrow, Oxfam's public health team leader for rural villages around Uvira, assures visitors that it's better than many that serve some of Congo's 62 million people, vast numbers of whom live in poverty. Few have the resources to pay for much medical care at all, but many live at risk of contracting serious diseases—like cholera—to which that poverty, with cruel irony, exposes them.
Nowhere is that more clear, perhaps, than along the stretch of land between the Mulongwe and Kavimvira rivers just outside of Uvira, South Kivu province.
It's there, between those two central sources of water, that the greatest number of cholera cases in the area erupt, says Jill Markvorsen, Oxfam's program manager for Uvira. During the first week of January, an outbreak almost reached epidemic proportions. At the cholera clinic in Uvira, workers charted 64 cases of the disease&mdasdh;one shy of the number that would have triggered the implementation of Uvira health zone's cholera contingency plan. Instead, officials, staffers from Oxfam and other aid groups, and volunteers from the Red Cross managed the flare-up by chlorinating water sources, making public health announcements on the radio, and providing information to people about measures they could take to improve hygiene and sanitation.
A few months later, in mid-March, both banks of the Mulongwe River are teeming with activity. Not far from one edge, a bare-bottomed boy dashes behind a bush and squats to relieve himself. Pigs root in a heap of rubbish that inches, black and slippery with mud, almost into the water. It rushes by filled with silt. Men wash their clothes. Others drive trucks and cars into the shallows to rinse off the dust and dirt. Up stream, a market crowded with people hugs the bank.
For those who have no other source, the Mulongwe River also serves as their supply for drinking water. It's no wonder then that cholera, caused by ingesting water or food contaminated by the bacterium vibrio cholerae, is one of the ugly facts of life for people living in this war-torn region.
At the Uvira cholera clinic, Oxfam helped to install a large tank that stores a backup supply of water—collected from the roof during rainstorms and precious for its relative purity. Two large rooms—one for men and the other for women—serve as sick wards. Simple beds—wood frames with sheets of rugged plastic stretched taut across and cut in the center with a hole—are scattered about the rooms. Others are piled outside.
The wards are empty on this mid-March day—a good sign.
Morrow, the public health team leader, says that the medical staff in Uvira has been trained well to provide patients with good care. Though there is not so much it can do to prevent people from contracting a disease that's so closely linked to the lack of public services—like potable water—the staff has been successful, says Morrow, in stemming the tide of cholera deaths.
And in a place where basic precautions take on ominous importance, blue buckets filled with a mixture of water and a heavy dose of chlorine dot the perimeter of the clinic's yard. All visitors are advised to scrub their hands with that solution before they leave. Most do—and duck out smelling like a swimming pool in the western world, but grateful for it.
]]>Ethiopia's finest coffee is grown in the shade of native trees, which allows the coffee cherries to retain their moisture until they are ready to be picked. Without the shade of these generations-old trees, the coffee bushes would produce bitter tasting, inferior quality beans.
Berhanu says he knows it pays dividends to protect the environment. "One of our family plots had its natural shade deforested and so the coffee beans that particular plot yields are not of the expected high quality," says Berhanu. "Our cooperative union will not accept lower-grade coffee to be sold in the international specialty market, so we sell it for local consumption and make less money from it."
To remedy this problem, Berhanu is getting technical support from experts at the local agricultural bureau to reforest the plot with indigenous trees. The agricultural bureau is providing Berhanu and others in the area with tree seedlings.
With the mid-day sun peeking through the canopy of trees and the birds calling in the distance, Berhanu says he is at his best when he is hard at work on his family's coffee plots. "You see, it is not just the coffee bushes that enjoy the shades," he chuckles as he makes himself comfortable under a giant sycamore tree. "After a long day's work, a little rest under the shade of these old trees rejuvenates my soul."
Parents to 12 children, Berhanu and his wife Aster have been growing coffee for the past 10 years. They depend on the income they get from growing world renowned Yirgacheffe coffee to support eight of their children that are still living with them and are attending school.
Berhanu and Aster were new to the coffee business when, in 2001, the price of coffee sank to a 30-year low and the global coffee crisis hit Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee. Rather than giving up in despair, Berhanu and his family were determined to ride out the storm and come out stronger than when they started. Oxfam America was by their side as it led a global campaign to bring the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers to the attention of national and international policy makers, consumer governments, international coffee roasters and consumers.
The couple says they have come a long way since the coffee crisis, which threatened their livelihoods and caused a shock to the country's coffee economy. Gone are the days when they had to sell whatever meager assets they had to put food on the table. "Our living conditions have improved significantly," says Aster. "As a mother, I dream of even better things for my family, but right now, I am secure knowing that my family is well fed, healthy, and that my children go to school".
It was just a little over a year ago that 238 coffee growers in Werka came together to form a primary cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. Soon after Werka joined the Union, membership shot up to 300 when word got out that Oxfam America was launching a project to support coffee quality improvement by funding the purchase of an eco-friendly coffee washing station.
As a natural extension of its global campaign and advocacy work to help Ethiopian coffee growers earn better prices, Oxfam America is increasingly investing in coffee quality improvement, focusing on eco-friendly coffee processing. This is one component of Oxfam America's effort to help cooperatives produce quality coffee and generate additional premium by selling their beans on the international specialty coffee market. The Werka project is one of three such projects that Oxfam America has funded in three different coffee growing regions of Ethiopia.
The funding for Werka and the other two cooperatives was made available as an interest free revolving loan of about US$ 150,000 each to be paid back in five years to be re-invested in another cooperative, yielding much higher returns on initial donor investment. Financing the equipment with a loan makes cooperative members accountable for the loan repayment and solidifies the fact that they are the real owners of the investment.
By utilizing eco-friendly coffee processing, the cooperatives will not only increase their income as a result of selling washed coffee but also address environmental pollution related to the conventional coffee processing method. In the conventional method the coffee pulp and mucilage are removed from the beans and get discharged into nearby streams and ponds where they decompose and deteriorate the water quality of ponds and streams that the local community uses for household consumption. The eco-friendly method of processing reduces the amount of organic waste from the washing process and cuts water usage by 98.5 percent.
Members of Werka cooperative are eagerly awaiting the next coffee harvesting season to begin using their newly installed eco-friendly washing machine. They say having such a facility on site will allow them to kill two birds with one stone—increase their income by selling washed coffee and also in the process conserve the environment that is so crucial for their ability to continue producing high quality coffee. With minimum additional investment, the accumulated pulp and mucilage, which are organic by-products of washed coffee, can be converted into bio-fuel, fertilizer, and animal feed to boost the income of coffee growers; Oxfam America has plans to invest in such a pilot project in 2008.
"Producing high-quality coffee will give us the legitimacy to demand better price in the international market," says Berhanu, his fingers moving nimbly as he carefully picks the ripened coffee cherries and places them in a basket. "So, the way I see it, the Werka project represents the best combination of solutions—earn more for our hard work, while at the same time preserving the environment that we depend on for our livelihoods."
]]>It is hard to reconcile the beauty of the lake with the violence along its shores. Mejía's work to defend the environment, and propose sustainable ways of living and working, has angered some who would prefer to rely on industrial mining for economic development in the region. A local citizen's organization has written a threatening letter to the Interior Ministry in Guatemala City, saying her work to educate community leaders about the risks of mining is unacceptable. She continues working, with international observers with her at all times to protect her.
Mejía first came here 10 years ago. She and her three children settled in the lakeside town of El Estor, promoting ecotourism and waging a series of campaigns to protect Lake Izabal from oil and mining projects that she says threaten the natural resources of the region—and won—t do much to benefit the local farming and fishing communities.
In 2002, Mejía and a handful of teachers, fisherman, environmentalists, a local physician and other citizens took on Shell Oil, which had a concession to drill right through the bottom of the lake. The small band of opponents founded the Association of Friends of Lake Izabal (ASALI) and succeeded in blocking the licenses for this project. ASALI then turned its attention to nickel mines along the sides of the lake.
There has been industrial mining in Izabal since the 1950s, but it has been in fits and starts as the prices of commodities have spiked and crashed over the years. But mining is now booming everywhere, so the Canadian company Skye Resources, which bought the mine in 2004, is now preparing to work a 100-square-mile concession it acquired in 2005. The area is home to 30 indigenous Q'eq'chi communities. None were properly consulted about the concession. This constitutes a violation of Guatemala's 1996 Peace Accords and international laws that protect indigenous people. The company is now engaged in talks with communities to convince them to go along with the plan to mine.
Skye Resources is now operating at a loss as it seeks financing so it can start mining in 2009. The company estimates it could get as much as 673,000 tons of nickel out of the mine. As part of its effort to clear people out of the concession area, the company and police forcefully evicted a number of Q'eq'chi communities in January of 2007, burning their humble shelters to the ground.
"We need a strong defense of the environment here," Mejía says at her home in El Estor. She has just finished a meal of traditionally prepared fish from Lake Izabal, and dines with visitors and two members of Peace Brigades International, who accompany her to ensure her safety.
ASALI is working in 29 communities to teach their leaders about mining: how much water is used, the chemicals, the transportation, and the rights of indigenous communities to be consulted. "We want every community leader to attend one of these workshops, and share their ideas and problems and work on them together," Mejía says. With help from Oxfam America, ASALI also arranges for these leaders to visit other mining areas in Honduras and in Guatemala's western highlands to see the effects of mining on indigenous people. "This is so they can see the consequences and talk to affected people," she says.
With the laws around land rights so unclear in Guatemala, indigenous people lack the required title and other official documents they need to defend their territory. Mejía says this needs to be addressed. "Through our contacts we have put the issue of land on the national agenda; it's been discussed in congress, so people are aware of the problems of land in mining concession areas."
Much of Mejía's motivation comes from her commitment to the people, all those who fish and grow corn on the fields near the lake. "When you come here and see the needs of the poor communities, you can see that people are not asking for much in life. But when you see the injustices and the way things are taken from them, it is so unfair that they are so poor and have so few opportunities despite the richness and national treasure here," she says. "This leads you to fall in love with this place. It makes you want to do something to contribute to changes here—and to denounce the injustice."
It is just this commitment that puts her at risk. Her Peace Brigade guardians are with her and several of her colleagues from ASALI, all of whom are working under threat. Mejía says they are not radicals."We want people to understand that there is another healthy and just way to develop this area, through rational use of the national treasures we have here."
"If at some time we no longer exist, we hope that we have sowed some seeds of awareness, solidarity, and respect to the environment. In this threatening climate for our work, our vulnerability makes us do what little we can—with all our hearts."
]]>So, when it comes to educating the public about how worsening storms, rising sea levels, droughts, and disease hurt poor people, the organizers spend months just laying the foundations, and building understanding among the general public.
This was the goal for Oxfam America's Walk for Climate Justice, a weekend of attention-grabbing events around the country this April. Oxfam field organizers and volunteers organized the walks in 11 cities from Los Angeles to Miami; Lawrence, Kansas to Burlington, Vermont.
Jim French, Oxfam's field organizer in the Midwest, said that amidst a sea of other organizations, Oxfam's efforts got a lot of attention. "There were approximately 30 different NGOs present at the Denver Green Apple event," he said. "Oxfam was both very visible and very well attended."
Holding buckets and walking in a procession, the organizers and volunteers used the walk to symbolize the increasingly long distances poor people must travel to collect water for drinking, cooking, and bathing. At the end of the procession, the volunteers stacked the buckets in pyramids and read stories about how climate change affects people in developing countries like Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Malawi.
They collected about 3,700 petition signatures from onlookers, each asking the US presidential candidates to set aside funding to help poor and vulnerable communities adapt to the realities of a changing climate. These signatures will be submitted to the presidential candidates later this election season along with thousands of other signatures collected by members of the Climate Equity Campaign, a coalition which includes Oxfam America, Friends of the Earth, ActionAid, Climate Action Network, and Oil Change International.
For Oxfam's second group of trained volunteers, known collectively as the Oxfam Action Corps, the event was a good, early foray into on-the-ground organizing. Twenty Oxfam Action Corps volunteers organized around the Farm Bill last year. And the new class of 26 began by visiting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill and then organizing Walks for Climate Justice around the country in April.
Christina Bronsing, an Oxfam Action Corps volunteer from Chicago, organized two walks. She gathered 15 volunteers at a Green Apple Festival in April. And later that month, she led 50 high school students through a procession along Michigan Avenue, one of Chicago's busiest streets.
Bronsing said the walks, like just being a part of the Oxfam Action Corps itself, gave her an opportunity to speak out about climate change and its disproportionate effects on poor people.
"It's something I really care about, so this gives me such a practical way to put it into action," she said.
Dan Coe, an Oxfam supporter and astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, learned about the Walk for Climate Justice through an email from Oxfam. He was intrigued by Oxfam's take on the issue, so he decided to get involved.
"I think global poverty is about the most important issue there is," Coe said. "The fact that Oxfam is coming at it from the climate change angle is interesting. Let's help poor people: It doesn't matter if it's climate change that's behind it."
]]>In April, the Ethiopian government announced that 2.18 million people now need emergency food assistance. Citing the toll water shortages have taken on crops and pastureland, Ethiopia has asked donors for $67.7 million in aid to help it meet the nutritional needs of people in six of the country's nine states, as well as needs for emergency water provision, animal care, and seeds. The government has also said an additional 947,383 people would have their emergency needs met through Ethiopia's existing safety net.
Oxfam and the local groups with which it partners are responding to the crisis in the Somali and Oromia regions through a multi-pronged approach which not only addresses the immediate requirements families have for water, but also provides some help to reduce the risk of hardship during the next water shortage.
In Ethiopia, the daily chore of fetching water usually falls to women and children. In drought situations, when local sources such as shallow ponds or wells dry up, the trek for this essential resource becomes even more grueling.
The Liben Pastoralist Development Association, an Oxfam partner working in the southern part of the country, realized how acute the water shortage had become when it began receiving reports of women, some of them pregnant, walking more than 18 miles from their villages to the nearest water point. Laden with 20-liter jugs of water, some of those women miscarried. Others delivered their babies along the road.
In one part of the Somali region, Oxfam learned that people were selling jerricans of water for 30 birr, or about $3.20—a small fortune in a country where poverty is widespread. Some private businesses had even started importing water from Hargessa in Somaliland.
An assessment team that traveled to the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia reported in March that more than 17,000 animals had died since January in the 11 districts it visited. Herding families in the area depend on those animals—cows, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys—not only for food but also as a critical source of income. The team found that drought had prompted the closing of 29 schools in that area because there was no water for the students. And local officials told team members that many elderly residents were showing signs of malnutrition—a possible indication that the Borena people were using one of their traditional coping strategies. In their culture, the first priority of women during food shortages is to invest in the youngest generation: children eat before their elders do.
Families in these dry pastoral areas have developed a number of ways to cope with recurrent drought. Some of them have been able to keep reserves of hay on hand for their animals when the pasture dries up. Sometimes, people slaughter their cows and goats and use the meat to help feed their families. When they can, they hunt for wood to sell or to turn into charcoal. If families lose their entire herds, other families contribute animals to get a new herd started.
But over the years, the persistent crises have depleted the assets of many people and exhausted their ability to cope. For herders, their traditional means of managing are also running headlong into modern realities. For instance, the populations of both people and their animals are growing. The allocation of communal grazing areas to private investors and a system of regionalization is limiting the amount of land herders can have access to. And bush, once burned off by fires that have since been banned, continues to encroach on valuable pastureland.
One of the consequences of the current crisis is a plunge in the value of animals. Without enough water or pasture they become sick, and many die. The Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, an Oxfam partner, reports that the drop in value of livestock has been extreme in districts such as Dire and Dillo in the Borena zone.
And herders are facing a double hit. As they are earn less for their animals, they are simultaneously confronted with spiraling costs for grain—a food staple. Gayo notes that grain prices have jumped by almost 100 percent in some districts.
To help ease some of the severe hardships caused by the drought, Oxfam is working with four local groups to distribute water, provide needy animals with feed and veterinary care, and rehabilitate a series of local ponds so they can provide water in the future.
With support from Oxfam, the Liben Pastoralist Development Initiative's plans have called for providing drinking water to 6,000 people in two areas in the Liben District of the Oromia region's Guji Zone. The water is being trucked in from wells about 28 miles away and stored in four large tanks—and providing enough to allow each person about 4 gallons a day.
The Liben group is also transporting hay and a wheat-bran feed into the region to help shore up the strength of the animals on which people depend. But in an indication of how challenging it can be to work in remote areas, the nearest place Liben can find the necessary fodder is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, more than 370 miles to the north.
In the Dillo and Dhas districts of the Borena Zone, Action for Development is restoring three wells that typically serve 4,000 to 5,000 head of livestock each day. But because of the drought and shrinking water supplies elsewhere, the number of animals relying on water from these sources could double. The plan calls for the purchase of generators and sub pumps to get these wells running at maximum efficiency.
Like the Liben group, Action for Development is also trucking water in to Dillo and Dhas to help more than 5,000 people with access to a clean supply. The trucks are transporting the water from wells up to 34 miles away.
An estimated 13,500 people and 2,500 head of cattle will benefit from a series of projects the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative is also carrying out with Oxfam's help, including the restoration of two ponds in the Borena zone. Ponds provide one of the central sources of water for animals in the area, but during long dry spells they dry up, especially if silt has made them shallow.
By hiring local people to deepen the ponds, Gayo is able to provide families with an important source of income while also helping them to increase the holding capacity of these critical water sources.
"Rehabilitation of ponds during the dry season tremendously increases their capacities and enables them to serve for a longer period of time during drought," said Gayo in its grant application to Oxfam. Gayo pointed to its successes with three ponds in the Moyale area during the 2006 drought.
"The three ponds rehabilitated in response to the drought have still enough water and serve the community at the moment," Gayo said.
]]>In the area near Dubluq, Borena clans have wells with earthen ramps leading their cows down to flat areas with mud troughs so their animals can drink water passed up, bucket by bucket, by teams of men in a vertical chain, all singing to keep rhythm. These traditional eela wells, also called singing wells, are crucial in the dry season, and the clans have a schedule for which herds can access the wells on different days.
One of the wells near Dubluq is a bit special. The Negelle well has a wider entry ramp leading to a large flat surface surrounded on three sides by concrete troughs and a large reservoir. Dida Ollo, leader of the Maleu Gida sub clan, stands next to the Negelle eela and smiles, showing his impossibly straight, white teeth. "My clan and my community are overjoyed," he says as his clan members pass water up to the troughs in preparation for several herds expected that afternoon. "Imagine," Ollo says. "We can water up to 1,600 cattle in a day. With our old eela we could only take care of much fewer cattle."
The contrast with the older traditional wells is clear: In some of the older wells the herders stand precariously on a rickety, makeshift wooden ladder, passing the water up to an earth trough about 15 feet long. Each day they must create a mud out of water and dust from a termite mound to line the trough to reduce seepage. It is more work to serve fewer cows: About 15 cows can drink at one time. The neighboring Negelle well can serve 70 cows at one time, and has a steel ladder and platform system on which the herders stand securely passing the water buckets up and down.
Dida Ollo's clan asked Oxfam America's partner in Dubluq, Action for Development (AFD), to help them rehabilitate their traditional eela. Clan members donated their labor, sold cows to buy materials, and worked with AFD to optimize the design. Oxfam America contributed a grant for part of the cost.
Just enlarging the entry ramp made a huge difference, decreasing the angle and widening the width from two to 13 meters. Nasir Tonea, the construction foreman for the project with AFD, says "Before we leveled the entrance, it was really steep. And only one cow at a time could enter. After they drank, they big cows had trouble getting out, we would have to get behind and push. Now we can have 70 cows leaving to one side so they can let another herd of cows come down—they let them in because they can see they are thirsty," he says. "They have better manners than most people on the roads nowadays."
Dida Ollo says the rehabilitation made a huge difference. "The difference between the old and new well is like night and day." He says they sometimes allow other clans to water their cattle at the Negelle well when the other nearby traditional wells can't cope with the demand in dry times.
Next to the Negelle well there is a plaque that reads, "Dubluq well rehabilitated with the partnership of the local community, Oxfam America, and Action for Development." Now 68, Dida says this is part of his legacy: "When I pass away future generations will know we accomplished this together." It's important to him because it enshrines his participation in important Borena traditions. "There are two sacred things in Borena life," Ollo explains later at his house. "The first is to raise a girl and give her hand away in marriage. The second is to bring the clan together to work on our eela."
]]>The reservoir is at the base of large, steep hill, more like a small mountain really. At the top is a spring, from which water flows through pipes to the pond. It was constructed three years ago by a nearby organization called Action for Development with support from Oxfam America. Before then Jarrso's clan members had to herd their cows up the steep hill, the only means to get water in the dry season. Every day cows would expire on the path up to the spring.
"During the dry time there is no grass to eat," Jarsso says. "They could not climb, so we pushed them up, and some would die." There were years in which more than 10 a day would die on that hill.
Piping the water down the hill helps tremendously. More cows can access the water, the herders and their families can retain more of their wealth and can better survive the dry season, and they get clean, fresh water to drink and cook with, and wash their clothes in.
But the reservoir does not help one ongoing problem: herders are reporting that good pasture for grazing their cattle is harder and harder to find, and not just in the dry season. Jarsso and others in his clan say there are three main reasons for the disappearing pasture:
"The Borena people have many different methods for coping with drought," says Abera Tola, director of Oxfam America's program in Ethiopia. "But some of these bushes are new to them, and the increase in tick infestation may both be related to changes in the climate. We want to research this to find ways to help them."
Bilalo Jarsso said the Borena are trying to survive despite these challenges, and are accustomed to traveling two to three days at a time looking for decent pasture.
"We used to find grass somewhere," he said. It is becoming more and more difficult now.
Oxfam America's partner AFD is helping herders take a more active approach, teaching the Borena to manage their range land more aggressively and actually clear away the encroaching bushes to improve the pasture for grazing. This would be particularly crucial in the dry season, says Tolusa Kemaio, a project officer for AFD.
"The dry season is a very serious time here," he says. "People really struggle, and they can't just slaughter their animals to survive."
]]>The next day another farmer nearby will have a turn, but there is enough to go around. Dalacha says that he now has no water worries—even in January, a dry time of year. "We used to have to wait for rain, but now we use water whenever we want, and there is no difference between the rainy and dry season." Dalacha, 40, is well over six feet tall and rail thin, but still looks powerful and projects an energetic attitude. He is married to Safiye Bediya, and they have eight children between the ages of four and 20.
Dalacha says his income has increased and he is more secure now. He built a new concrete house next to their traditional mud and thatch round house with the money now coming in from vegetable sales. And Dalacha says all his children can now go to school. "Before, I had a shortage of income. Now it is no trouble to keep them in school with everything they need."
A steady supply of water for the families in Shasha Korke has been a big improvement. It came about through a project by the Ethiopian agency Center for Development Initiatives (CDI) funded in part with a $75,000 grant from Oxfam America starting in 2005, when dry weather in the scenic Rift Valley south of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, was causing serious hardship for farmers, who were growing primarily sugar cane for a cash crop. Sugar cane is difficult to grow: it needs a lot of water and does not contribute to the nutritional needs of small-scale farmers like those in Shasha Korke. This left many families there suffering from malnutrition if their crop yields were low, and income fell off.
Before the irrigation system was improved, the community had traditional earthen canals that fed water from the Dedeba Tina river to the farm plots, but it was inefficient. "There was a lot of water loss," says Dalacha. "It seeped into the soil, and could not reach the fields. Sometimes it would get clogged with grass and silt, so we could not irrigate our fields properly." CDI's proposal was ambitious, but straightforward: with help from the community famers, it built new irrigation channels lined with cement and gravel, with outlets leading directly into the small farms. CDI also built foot bridges over the channel, and gates to manage the flow of water to the different members of the community. The 1.8 kilometer channel (1.2 miles) was finished in 2006 and is now directly helping 68 households cultivating 25 hectares (61 acres) of farmland.
Woya Shakule, the 34-year-old chairman of the Shasha Korke water user committee, says all the farmers played a role in the project. Each bought shares in the irrigation system to help maintain it. The water users agreed on guidelines for sharing the water and maintaining the system, and helped CDI ensure the new channels would meet their needs. The committee organized training for the farmers, and distributed seeds to help them transition from growing sugar cane to vegetables, which they could eat as well as sell. "Most of them produced a crop once a year, but now they are harvesting twice a year," Shakule says, while standing next to one of the main irrigation channels, thought which water quietly gurgles "We see big changes here, and they are really life-changing."
Mekonnen Koji, CDI's project manager in the Shashamene area, says it is easy for him to see an improvement in the health of the children. They used to be malnourished, and the mothers looked worried. Now he says the children are healthier looking and more active. "It is vivid, the changes in the faces of the children," he says.
Safaye Bediya, wife of Dedefi Dalacha, agrees. "My children would catch cold easily," she says, noting that before the irrigation system was improved they could not grow enough food to eat and had to buy vegetables from the market. It was expensive and the quality was not as good as the fresh produce they now grow themselves. As their diet improved, so did the health of her children.
"Now they are healthy and happy," she says.
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