Delivering water to affected villages has been a race against time, as water pipes, generators, pumps, and electricity supplies have been destroyed or severely damaged in the conflict.
"In some of the villages, 80 percent of homes have been destroyed along with vital water systems of pipelines and large water storage reservoirs,” said Simon Springett, Country Program Manager for Oxfam.
"Access to clean drinking water and water for personal hygiene is vital to keeping people healthy in the wake of such a humanitarian disaster. We've geared up our delivery to bring immediate relief to families, but we're also working to repair water systems to enable villages to supply their own water again."
Oxfam, working with contractors and partners, is now supplying 1.2 million liters (312,000 gallons) a day to seven villages in south Lebanon and 360,000 liters (93,600 gallons) a day to the heavily bombed southern suburbs of Beirut.
Damage caused by the bombing has cut electricity to many villages and they now rely on emergency generators. Oxfam is providing a large generator to the southern town of Sifra that will pump enough water to supply the 12,000 local residents. Oxfam will also be assisting five southern towns to repair the pumping capacity of their main water supply wells. Where generators are working, Oxfam is supplying 300 liters (78 gallons) of fuel a day.
Oxfam is also supplying:
One of the remarkable things about Darfur is the number of people who are still volunteering with health committees after three years of living in Abu Shouk and Al Salaam camps outside of North Darfur's capital of El Fasher.
About 60 percent of the original committee volunteers at Abu Shouk have continued with their work. At nearby Al Salaam camp, the number is 80 percent. Their help is pivotal to the success of Oxfam's public health work in the camps. Every week they spend several hours visiting households in their allocated blocks and inspecting the surrounding areas.
They go shelter to shelter talking with families and sharing information on good hygiene. They check latrines for cleanliness and wear. And they instruct families on how to keep their water clean by making sure the jerry cans in which they store it are scrubbed with powdered soap and chlorine.
"We wanted to serve our people and to raise the awareness of the population so that everyone's at the same level," says Kaltoum Ali Asad, a volunteer at Abu Shouk.
"If we don't volunteer to do something the people would suffer and there'd be outbreaks of diseases and illnesses," adds Namma Saed Haroun at Al Salaam camp. "If we didn't volunteer it would be us who would eventually suffer, so we will continue to volunteer."
Their efforts win high praise from the agency.
"The volunteers work really hard," says Hussaam Eddin Mirghani, Oxfam's team leader at Abu Shouk. "They volunteer because they're afraid of diseases, especially diarrheal diseases, spreading throughout the camp. The volunteers really feel the necessity to support their communities and their people, who are really suffering in this dreadful situation."
Camp life is bleak. Ahmed Eysa, who has lived at Abu Shouk for three years with is family, makes that clear.
"Life here is horrible," he says. "It's full of difficulties, and we don't have any solutions in our hands. There are no choices for the people living here in the camp."
But Eysa has made one choice—an important one that will make a difference to others in the camp. He chose to volunteer, and he has continued giving his time for three years.
"We have to adapt to our situation and we really need to respond," he says. "There's no way we could give up."
Soon, the rains will come and fall heavily. Living conditions in the camps will deteriorate, and the threat of diseases like cholera, malaria, and diarrhea will rise. Then, the job of the health committee workers will be even more vital.
]]>In a place where there is no electricity to run a pump, where llamas instead of trucks transport many of the goods, and where most people rely on a local spiky grass for their cooking fuel, gravity is the free and super-abundant energy source that is now powering Simon Ccalachua's sprinkler. And beneath the arc of water it sprays, a new growth of hardy rye grass is now sprouting—the guarantee that Ccalachua's alpacas will have the nourishment they need.
Here in Jachaña, a small hamlet in the district of Caylloma, Oxfam America and its local partner, Asociación Proyección, have launched a pilot project aimed at helping poor herders find ways to improve their resources so they can better withstand the hardships of mountain living—the cold, the snow, the remoteness. The sprinkler systems—there are now three scattered around the district—are part of a larger program that has helped 355 families in the area with everything from veterinary services to the production of high-altitude barley for their animals. The effort is part of Oxfam America's strategy to help Andean communities adapt to climate change, some signs of which are already apparent.
"They used to rely on nature and now they know how to work on channels and sprinkling," said a translator, summarizing the benefits for Ccalachua. "Before this project, the mortality of the animals (was very high). Now the mortality is 3 to 10 percent".
Using the resources at hand—a mountain spring and the pull of gravity—the agencies worked with Ccalachu to irrigate about two-and-a-half acres of his sloped, rocky land. Well-watered and well-fertilized (naturally, with alpaca droppings), a pasture that size is big enough to keep 20 alpacas happily nourished, said Arturo Rivera Vigil, the field coordinator for Proyección. The trick is to fence off portions of the pasture after the animals have grazed, allowing the grasses to recover. By the time the herd completes a full rotation, the grass where they started will be ready to eat again.
The system has a number of benefits, said Rivera. The robust diet the animals get encourages them to produce more wool. Instead of one or two pounds of wool, each alpaca can produce between two and four pounds—which in turn means more income for herding families. Keeping watch over the animals in a fenced pasture is a great deal easier for a herder than following them high and low as they roam freely looking for natural grasses, added Rivera. And the mechanism is easy fairly easy to construct: A small reservoir above the field, lined with plastic, is connected it to a pipe running down the hill. With the twist of a valve, the reservoir opens and the water gushes down through a pipe, shooting through slow-spinning sprinklers set in a line across the field.
The only stumbling block is cost. The price tag on each of these sprinkler systems is $1,625, and that doesn't include the cost of the machinery used to help dig the small reservoir.
"That's why (Caylloma) City Hall has to get involved," said Angel Chavez, an Oxfam America humanitarian officer who has worked on the project. Using tax dollars, local government needs to help support these kinds of projects, he added.
That's what the people of Jachaña want too—more sprinklers like the one Ccalachua has. A few pipes hooked to a few small reservoirs could go a long way toward improving the resilience of these mountain families. And though life at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level can be hard, there is no other place some herders can imagine living.
"There is no pollution. The water is nicer. And we have open fields," said Timoteo Ccalahua Quispe.
This activity is part of Oxfam America's adaptation strategy on climate change in Andean communities where already there are some signals of the climate change effects.
]]>Alami Bera is one such woman living in Ethiopia's Bacho district, about 50 miles southwest of Addis Ababa. A mother of twelve children, Alami and her husband toil on their farm to support eight of their unmarried children. Sometimes they are elated with their plentiful harvest, but other times they struggle to feed their large family. They work on their field year round to grow wheat and teff, and make the two-hour trek on foot to sell what they have harvested at the nearest open-air market. This is the same market that Alami walks to every week to purchase items for her family's consumption.
Up until the time Oxfam America partnered up with Oromo Self Reliance Association (OSRA) to launch the Sodo Liben Water Supply and Sanitation project, Alami, her family, and the other 3,000 people living in Sodo Liben locality had no access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Waterborne diseases and other illnesses caused by lack of hygiene were rampant.
With heavy clay water pots on their backs, women and young girls traveled great distances on foot to fetch water from polluted streams. The hardship of fetching water increased as the dry season advanced, with the water levels dropping and the streams running dry. Women then would have to trudge down deep gorges and climb back up, lugging six gallons of water—about 50 pounds—on their backs.
For the 80 households living in Alami's village, the only near source of water was an ella, or traditional well, located at the heart of the village. The well, about 82 feet deep, had never been fit for drinking, but Alami had no choice other than to let her family drink from it. When the seasonal ella ran dry, Alami and the other women in her village walked two hours to fetch water from the nearest stream. One trip was never enough to meet the daily water needs of a family of 14. In a society where the burden of fetching water falls on women and young girls, Alami had to travel to the stream two or three times a day to fetch water.
"I knew the water I was giving my children was making them sick, but you have to know that I had no choice," said Alami. "I had only two choices. Either give my family filthy water to drink and bathe in or don't give them any water at all."
Ethiopia is known as the Water Tower of the Horn of Africa—a place with 12 river basins and vast underground reserves of water. Yet, the country has not been able to harness that potential. Countless traditional songs, poems, and proverbs praise the country's great rivers but lament the fact that the children of the mighty Blue Nile go thirsty while the river traverses boundaries to flow to far away lands and turn deserts into oasis. The irony is not lost on anyone.
Oxfam America set out on this project to provide a supply of clean drinking water and sanitation structures to improve health conditions and boost the productivity of people living in10 different sites within the district. Through this intervention, Oxfam America also intended to reduce the toil on women and young girls who had to walk great distances to fetch water. Oxfam and its partner constructed shallow wells, pit latrines, and washing stations and provided training to the communities on how to use them.
"Only a woman can fully appreciate what it means to have clean water near by," said Alami, pointing to the well and hand pump located only five yards from her thatch-roofed hut. "It now only takes me two minutes to pump out 7 gallons of clean water."
The hand-pumped well, which stands proudly in the middle of the village, is available five hours a day and the 80 households each get turns filling their jerricans for their daily use. The community imposed the five-hour limit to reduce wear and tear on the pump.
"What mother wouldn't give up everything she has to see her children's health restored?" asked Alami. "For the first time in our lives, our family is drinking and washing with clean water and using pit latrines."
Women in communities with the new wells are seeing some changes in gender role dynamics as more men are taking the initiative to fetch water for their families. It is a cultural taboo for a man to fetch water from a stream and carry it home on his back, so even the most helpful of husbands would only fetch water if the family owned a pack animal that could do the job.
"Imagine my husband sharing the water fetching responsibility with me," said Alami chuckling. "But he does it now, and I happily let him."
]]>Ato Teshome Belayneh, the chairman of the surrounding area, stood tall in his worn and dusty suit, a regular mode of dress for Ethiopians where even in the most rural areas it is considered important to be well-dressed. He explained that prior to the installation of this pump, which brings clean drinking water from almost 100 feet below the surface, the women of the village collected water from a small river, which he pointed out about 500 yards to the west in a steep ravine.
As the women filled the containers, they would cover the opening with cheesecloth to strain the worms and other small parasites from the water. Ato Teshome pointed out that there were many other dangerous things that the cloth failed to stop, but people here had little choice as this had previously been the only source of water. Stomach illnesses and diarrhea were rampant.
These once common illnesses have now decreased in Neftegna as the people have a clean source of water thanks to Oxfam America and our partner OSRA.
As Ato Teshome puts it, "this is a rebirth for us."
The new pump has been turned over to the Water Users' Committee, a group of seven people from Neftegna who OSRA has trained to manage the device. The community considers this new source of water so valuable that it has instituted strict measures to ensure the pump functions long into the future and that the water does not run low.
The pump is only available for operation for about five hours a day—once in the morning and again in the evening—as there is concern that using it during the heat of the day will cause damage. There is also an age limit placed on pump use: No one under 18 is allowed even to enter the fenced area.
As the people were explaining the restrictions they have put in place to keep their pump in good condition we witnessed the value that they put on this important community tool.
A member of our group stepped around to try the pump. As he was unaccustomed to using a pump like this he raised the handle quickly, meeting less resistance than he expected. As the handle reached its upper limit, it clanked loudly, metal hitting metal. The collective gasp from all 40 people almost completely blocked the reverberation. It was a minor issue, not causing any harm to the pump, but the gasp of alarm was a clear indicator that the users of this pump normally treat it with the same gentle care given a newborn baby.
In order to quell the fears of the water running low, the community has agreed to limit water usage to about 26 gallons per day per household. This is all the water a family of five to 10 people will use for the entire day to drink, cook, wash, and bathe. This is less than the amount of water people in the United States generally use to take a shower. An average American uses between 80 to 100 gallons a day according to U.S. Geological Survey, which means that a family of 5 uses about 500 gallons a day—almost 20 times the amount that a family in Neftegna uses.
While most Americans tend to take clean drinking water for granted, the people of Neftegna do not. Each household, 66 in total, contributes about 22 cents a month towards the upkeep of the pump.
The men that were still gathered as out visit drew to a close explained that people who live a two-hour walk away are coming to use the village pump, and while the people of Neftegna are willing to share what they have, they would much rather see the burden of their neighbors eased with the building of pumps in their respective villages.
Oxfam America has already funded the building of 10 pumps in Bacho, but clearly many more are needed.
]]>“If we don’t get more fuel for the water pumps and fresh people in to run the aid effort, we will be forced to turn off the taps for 110,000 people within the next three weeks at best. We are calling on the UN and donors to organize an air lift from neighboring Cameroon and a reliable food and fuel supply line in order to keep providing clean water and humanitarian aid to refugees and displaced Chadians,” said Nick Roseveare, Regional Director for West Africa.
The aid effort is running on empty. Oxfam International will face shortages of cash, fuel and food within the next three weeks, if the security situation does not improve.
“We have around three weeks of stock that will allow us to keep our operations going in eastern Chad, but our top priority is to be able to rotate our staff to keep the program going,” said Roseveare.
The fighting has completely cut off the landlocked eastern region from the rest of the country and the outside world for almost a week. International flights have stopped. There have been no flights between Ndjamena and the rest of the country for one week.
Oxfam International's operations are focused on providing water and sanitation, protection and health promotion to more 110,000 people. There are nearly half a million people displaced in Eastern Chad. The majority of them are refugees from the Darfur conflict.
Oxfam International has evacuated international staff from the capital but is keeping staff in the east to continue its operations. They are delivering life-saving water operations and they are stretched to full capacity, working around the clock.
]]>Oxfam says the government has coordinated well with the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC) in helping to evacuate more than 10,000 families in the central provinces of Tete, Sofala and Zambezia.
Around 72,000 people have so far been affected by the floods. At least 22,000 houses were submerged and an estimated 92,145 acres of crop land are affected by the floods. By far the worst affected area is Mutarara district in Tete province, where the INGC says that some 29,000 people were forced to flee their homes.
“The INGC’s search and rescue operations have been successful thus far,” said Michael Tizora, humanitarian coordinator of Oxfam International in Mozambique. “Most affected people have now been moved to resettlement sites. But with further rains forecasted throughout February many more people could still be at risk.”
For the second time in less than a year, tens of thousands of people have seen their crops destroyed. Oxfam is concerned about the long-term fate of these poor farmers.
“Donors need to be generous in the long-term, as well as with initial funding for the emergency response. People were only just beginning to re-build the little they had after the 2007 floods. They now have to start again,” Tizora said.
The flooding so far experienced in the Zambezi valley has exceeded last year's levels and some people fear it may well be worse than the 2000 and 2001 floods. However on Monday (Jan 14) the Cahora Bassa dam reduced its discharge from 6,600 to 5,500 cubic meters a second.
Oxfam is working in collaboration with the INGC and other local actors. Oxfam’s priority is to ensure that affected men and especially women and children have access to clean water and sanitation facilities in resettlement areas to avoid the risk of the spread of diseases such as cholera and diarrhea. Oxfam is currently gearing up to assist in the districts of Mutatara, Marromeu, Machanga, Govuro, and Tambara.
As part of its post-emergency program, Oxfam International is working in the resettlements centers from populations affected by 2007’s floods in Marromeu district to supply of safe water, adequate sanitation and public hygiene promotion. Oxfam is attending about 7,000 people in Chupanga, Amambos and Chiburiburi resettlement centers. Since early January 2008 another 2,500 people have sought shelter in these camps in face of the new floods.
The heavy rains and increased river levels have come earlier than usual. With several weeks of the traditional rainy season still to come, and more rain forecast for the Zambezi valley there is a risk of increased flooding. Oxfam is monitoring the situation and if flooding escalates is committed to respond. Rains have also displaced families in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
]]>According to an Associated Press story, President Correa publicly pledged government support for the case, which began nearly 10 years ago in the United States and was thrown out on appeal in 2003. Since then the court in Ecuador has been conducting judicial inspections of polluted areas, gathering evidence a judge will use to make a decision, possibly in the next year.
During the same week, indigenous leaders representing the people affected by the pollution in the Orellana and Succumbios region of Ecuador attended the annual meeting for shareholders of ChevronTexaco in California. Humberto Piaguaje, a leader of the Secoya indigenous people, called for the company to resolve the case and help clean up the environment. "We want you to give us back our lives," Piaguaje said. "We want you to let us live in peace and harmony with nature. We want you to repair the damage so that our children do not have to continue suffering."
Oxfam America has supported the Amazon Defense Front's legal case for nine years, and assisted in the creation of the Assembly of Delegates of Communities Affected by Texaco, a community-based organization that has ensured those most directly affected by the pollution have a voice in the legal strategy.
"We think it is positive that President Correa has declared his support of those affected by pollution in the Lago Agrio region," said Javier Aroca, who coordinates programs related to indigenous rights for Oxfam America in South America. "We consider this is a signal that the government is interested in investigating and sanctioning those who are responsible."
"It is important to remember that the people affected are demanding compensation for almost 10 years now," Aroca said. "The pollution has affected the health of indigenous peoples and peasants... there have been cases of skin diseases and cancer. Furthermore, the lands are not as productive as they used to be, which has affected the agricultural economy. From our point of view, the government of Ecuador should support the affected population to complete the legal procedures, which are very expensive."
A win for the Amazon Defense Front in this precedent-setting case could change the landscape of the oil industry, and further establish the rights of communities to be compensated for negative social and environmental effects of oil operations.
]]>We were there, together with Angel Chavez, one of Oxfam America’s humanitarian officers, to gather stories about Oxfam’s work with alpaca herders. They had suffered serious losses in 2004 when a severe winter storm killed many of the wooly creatures that are the backbone of the local economy. So vital are these camel cousins to the well-being of the families scattered across the mountains that many of the shelters they have built for the animals are superior to their own mud-brick and stone homes.
The income from alpaca wool—softer than cashmere when it’s cleaned, spun, and woven—feeds and clothes families, buys them medicine, and helps cover the occasional extraordinary expense. Without the few hundred dollars herders earn each year from the sale of the wool, life in these barren, thin-aired mountains would not be possible for them. And for many, it’s the only life they have ever known, helping to account for Peru’s position as the world’s top producer—by far—of alpaca wool.
About 80 percent of the wool now on the market comes from this South American country; Bolivia produces another 15 percent; and the rest comes from a smattering of countries including Australia, Switzerland, and England. So you would think, given Peru’s dominance in the industry, that the work of these Caylloma herders would guarantee their families a measure of security. Not so.
There, at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level, nothing is certain: The cold kills, and changing weather patterns are robbing the region of the rain it needs for mountain pastures to grow. Life is hard, and people are very poor.
Oxfam’s work with Proyección has been to help Caylloma herders find ways to buffer themselves against future disasters by improving pastureland; planting barley to serve as an emergency reserve for their animals; and developing an early alert system, including the installation of a simple radio network—all at an altitude that has scared off just about every other aid group.
“Nobody has worked at this height,” said Rivera. “No one wants to come up here. Only us.”
There’s a reason: To reach Caylloma’s remote communities requires a degree of energy that would exhaust a lesser field coordinator and his team. But for Rivera, that challenge—and the need that is so evident among the families of this rugged terrain—is the inspiration that repeatedly draws him up the steep slopes to Chinosiri, Jachaña, and a handful of other hamlets.
From Arequipa, a city in southern Peru where Proyección has its offices, the drive in a pair of heavy-duty pickup trucks to the town of Caylloma took us about seven hours through rain, hail, and snow on a rutted mountain road—and that was just the first half of the journey. Following a night’s rest, we left at 6 a.m. for the three-hour climb to Chinosiri, the belly of our truck scraping the ruts as we inched around hairpin turns and splashed through streams carving gullies in the dirt track.
The snow was falling in fat, wet flakes, blanketing the mountains in white, when Rivera, in the truck ahead, pulled over and jumped out, signaling that this—of all high and remote spots—was just the place for a group picture.
“Beautiful!” he said, surveying the vast emptiness around us: no trees, no bushes, no dwellings—only mountains and more mountains with sharp rocks underfoot.
It wasn’t until I scrambled up the slippery bank to where Rivera and Chavez were already standing in the snow that I realized just how hard the work in Caylloma could be: Without the sea-level amounts of oxygen I was used to, a few quick steps at 15,748 feet high left me breathless and exhausted. Puffing hard, I slipped back down the embankment and into the truck, grateful to be sitting once again, and marveling at the stamina of my colleagues. Could I do this, like them, on a regular basis? Could anybody?
Rivera had already answered that question: No.
The air at the end of this Andean summer was cold and damp, and all of us in the pair of trucks were bundled in just about every stitch of clothing we had brought. I had on two shirts, a sweater, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket, a down vest, a windbreaker, thick wool socks, and a wool cap—just enough to keep the chill at bay.
So I was surprised to see, beyond the steamed windows of the warm truck, two boys hiking hard and fast through the mud on a slope of pasture: They had only sandals on their feet—no shoes, no socks to keep the cold away. They’re boys, I thought, and that’s what boys do: tough things.
But as we bounced along, there were others—men, women, children—all wearing sandals in the frigid air. And as the clouds swept across the sky, occasionally unleashing a shower of cold rain, some of the mountain dwellers hardly seemed to notice, and simply wrapped themselves tight in their woolen blankets and ponchos.
Jose Gonzalez Condo, who has lived all of his 39 years in the tiny community of Chinosiri, explained that he and his fellow villagers are used to the mountain weather and its variable conditions. Chinosiri is home, he said, and he likes it.
But as weather patterns have begun to change—the rains are coming late, which in turn delays the growth of pasture grasses and threatens the health of herds—raising alpacas at this altitude has become increasingly difficult, said Gonzalez. And in the recent past, there was no way to get the word out about challenging weather conditions—be they drought or cold waves—unless someone made the 30-mile trek down to Caylloma to ask for help. The only way to get there is on foot, and the walk takes a day.
Chinosiri’s new two-way radio, installed by Proyección in February, has connected this remotest of villages to the outside world. And with that connection has come the sliver of hope that a way of life for the 70 families there—and for more than 3,400 rural residents scattered across the Caylloma district—is now more secure.
]]>The work is part of Oxfam America's new public health initiative launched by the humanitarian response department. Its aim is to deepen the effectiveness of its emergency programs and to start building a bank of scientific data that the agency can use to advocate for changes that will improve the lives of poor people.
"Public health assessments provide true evidence of a problem, and they are a lot more effective than rhetoric in focusing attention on the issues," said Miriam Aschkenasy, an emergency medicine physician and Oxfam America's first public health specialist.
Hired in July to head the initiative, Aschkenasy will work on a variety of projects as the agency begins to map out its public health priorities and build a network of specialists who could respond in humanitarian emergencies when the need arises.
"Public health was going on, but no one was calling it public health," said Aschkenasy. "Some of the grants Oxfam awarded to partners were addressing problems such as diarrhea, HIV/AIDS, and access to care. All of these are public health issues, but they didn't fall into a particular person's portfolio. As the humanitarian response department did more of this work, it became apparent it needed someone who specialized in this area."
But Aschkenasy is not undertaking this task alone. A key component of the new program calls for collaboration between Oxfam and top medical facilities, many of which are located in Boston, the agency's headquarters. A formal partnership with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative is the first of these relationships. The initiative, or HHI, is a joint academic program involving multiple entities within Harvard's academic and medical community. It combines expertise in public health, medicine, social science, and humanities to advance research, practice, and policy in the field of humanitarian assistance.
"Here in Boston we have access to some of the most skilled public health specialists in the world," said Michael Delaney, Oxfam's director of humanitarian response. "We give them the history, the politics, and the culture of a situation--the key ingredients to an effective humanitarian response--and they give us the voice of authority on public health matters when we meet with government officials to push for change."
Twice since last summer, teams from HHI have been dispatched to Ethiopia to quickly study a problem and make recommendations on situations in which people's lives were at grave risk.
In the first instance, an outbreak of ethnic fighting in the southern part of the country had forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and seek safety in the bush. Hunger, exposure to the elements, and extremely limited water supplies had begun to take a toll on many of those who had fled. Oxfam and HHI sent a small team?two doctors and a humanitarian response specialis--to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation and offer ideas for improving it.
"The humanitarian needs among the internally displaced people in both the Guji and Borena zones are significant," said Jennifer L. Chan, one of the Harvard doctors, after the visit. "At the time of the HHI/Oxfam assessment, immediate food, shelter, and non-food items were needed as well as establishment of long-term peace building activities." Oxfam had already provided some emergency assistance prior to the assessment.
Three months later, Oxfam and HHI sent a second team to Ethiopia to investigate and respond to the outbreak of cholera.
"The idea behind the assessments is to provide a superior response," said Aschkenasy. "Our affiliation with HHI does that. It provides us with a cadre of cutting edge public health professionals, academics, and their resources. And the evidence they help us gather strengthens our ability to call for change."
Aschkenasy will help lay the groundwork for some of that change when she travels to Ethiopia in mid-January on a prevention mission that may help stop a repeat of the widespread suffering that affected millions of people across East Africa last year. Their lives stood in the balance as a devastating drought gripped the region, killing the livestock on which they depended for food, drying up their water sources, and plunging countless families into debilitating hunger. By the time the extent of the drought became clear to the rest of the world, it had already caused profound damage.
In Moyale, a dusty border town between Ethiopia and Kenya, Aschkenasy and Chan will launch a drought early surveillance system developed by Oxfam America and HHI. Their goal is to help officials in the region track public health trends that will warn them in advance about which droughts could become killers. How much food do families have access to? Are they plagued by diarrhea? Do their children have respiratory problems? Do their goats, cows, and sheep have enough pasture? How much rain has fallen? Is the price of grain climbing?
They sound like simple questions, but their answers--plotted on a chart that can make trends frighteningly clear--could be key to getting people in this drought-prone region, many of whom are herders and extremely poor, the help they need before it's too late.
"If we can determine quickly what the effects of limited rainfall are, then we can start doing interventions long before things get so bad that severe malnutrition becomes widespread and feeding centers are our only recourse," said Aschkenasy.
A fellow at HHI, Aschkenasy keeps her medical skills honed by working four eight-hour shifts a month at the Boston Medical Center. But she knew long before arriving at Oxfam that public health was where her heart was.
"When I was in my second year of residency, I had a chance to go to Nepal and work in the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. It doesn't take you long to realize that public health has a much greater impact on people than one-on-one patient care. I also realized how much I loved it," said Aschkenasy. "There's a role for one-on-one clinical care, and I enjoy it. But there's something much more satisfying about public health work. It has a broader impact. You're preventing something from happening."
And that's a central objective for Oxfam?s humanitarian response department: preventing events--natural or man-made--from cascading into disasters.
"Public health ties right in with our preparedness and livelihoods work. That triad is what development is all about," said Aschkenasy.
]]>This land is dotted by native conifers and flowering rhododendrons, but through the years outsiders have come to exploit timber and other natural resources. Deforestation has led to landslides, and landslides have threatened villagers' crops and homes.
In the past, the plans and activities of the county government and the needs of the local people, mostly Tibetans, were not coordinated. When problems arose, the right solutions were hard to come by. Oxfam America worked to change that.
First, the research. Oxfam partner organization CBIK, the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge, has helped local government officials, academics, non-governmental organization (NGO) workers, school teachers, and villagers conduct research on issues related to their environment and development.
Then the sharing. CBIK has worked to share the research among the participants, creating multi-stakeholder forums where government officials sit down with local residents to discuss topics as varied as: animal husbandry, the collection of non-timber forest products such as mushrooms, water resource management, land use management, and even Tibetan medicine.
The forums give participants the opportunity to discuss issues of concern, and have inspired new projects in response to the issues raised.
After one multi-stakeholder forum, Jiabi villagers and county government officials agreed that a new dike needed to be built along a stream that flows through their village. The dike will guard against flooding, erosion and landslides, and help ensure that the people have access to a reliable source of water.
Instead of the government hiring an outside company to build the dyke—a typical solution in the past—the villagers built it themselves. The county government gave them financial and technical support.
"The old dike, built by a private company from outside, was so weak a small monkey could knock it down. But the dike we built is strong," said Riqing Pinchu, the head of Jiabi Village. "We used to wait for the government to come to us, but now we can take responsibility for our own development."
The county government learned that involving civil society—not always an easy concept in China—has its benefits. "When villagers participate in their own development and prioritize their needs, we get greater buy-in and can increase their capacity at the same time," said Lurong Yixi, the county director for minority affairs.
Experience has taught the Jiabi villagers an important lesson—their natural resources sustain their lives, so they must protect them. And by collaborating with the government, sharing their collective knowledge, and using venues such as the multi-stakeholder forums they can make decisions about their own future.
]]>Across Ethiopia, these are the images tied to cycles of drought that plague one of the poorest countries in the world. Most recently, a drought triggered a humanitarian crisis in early 2006 for more than 2.5 million people. Many of them were herders dependent on the rain to nourish pastureland for their animals—their central source of food and income.
Oxfam and the local organizations with which it works respond to these cycles of drought with both emergency assistance to ease the immediate suffering of people and their animals, and with programs aimed at longer-term solutions to address the region's severe water shortages and to improve the health of its livestock.
For example, in Afar, one of Ethiopia's northern regions, a water shortage in 2005 forced some people to walk up to four hours one way in search of the critical resource. Irregular and weak rainfall in the previous few years had caused pastureland to shrivel and water sources to disappear. About 90 percent of the people in Afar are herders, and many of their animals died as a consequence of the drought.
To help families survive, Oxfam and one of the local groups with which it works, the Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA), launched a project to truck water to three sites in Afar's Dubti district. The agencies set up 12 large tanks that could each hold 1,321 gallons of water. The trucks made daily deliveries to the tanks—the furthest of which was 70 miles from the well that provided the water.
Though only a temporary solution—and a costly one—the water trucking substantially relieved stress on the herders. Women who had been walking for eight to 10 hours to fetch water from a neighboring district had their trek cut to just a few kilometers.
In another area of Afar, Oxfam provided APDA with an $83,000 grant to offer veterinary care to 410,000 animals. The goal was to prevent the spread of common diseases such as Anthrax, Blackleg, and Pastereulosis.
More recently, in southern Ethiopia, Oxfam and another local partner, the Gayo Pastoral Development Initiative, worked on the restoration of a local pond so it could hold enough water to last between the sporadic rainy seasons. The pond is a central source of drinking water for the community's animals. As in Afar, many people in this part of the Oromiya region are herders.
The 2006 pond project did two things. It provided temporary work for local people hired to deepen the pond, thereby giving them a source of income to help tide them through the drought that was killing their animals. And secondly, the improvements will last into the future, ensuring that when the next drought comes the pond will be able to retain whatever limited amount of rain does fall.
Shortages of critical resources, such as water and pasture, can often spark conflict among different ethnic groups. A key part of Oxfam's work in parts of Ethiopia is peace-building—helping people find ways to resolve disputes without resorting to violence. Around the border town of Moyale in southern Ethiopia, for instance, Oxfam and the Research Center for Civic and Human Rights Education have established a series of peace councils whose job it is to intervene among sparring groups when tension begins to run high.
Elsewhere in Oromiya, Oxfam has been working with the Oromo Self-Reliance Association on a series of water supply projects that have improved the lives of 1,800 people in three communities about 50 miles southwest of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. Oxfam contributed $42,000 to underwrite the cost of wells, pumps, bathing sheds, and laundry stations.
Before these improvements, women in one of the communities, Gura, were walking up to three hours a day to fetch water—and often it was dirty. The parasites that occasionally contaminated the water sickened the children who drank it. Now, for families in Gura, clean, cool water is just minutes away. A nearby pump taps into an aquifer 200 feet deep.
The water supply projects have made such a marked difference in people's lives that neighboring communities are now asking officials to make similar improvements in their villages.
Easy access to clean water, through projects like these, is critical in stemming the poverty that affects so much of Ethiopia. And they are part of the global drive to meet the Millennium Development Goals—a series of international targets aimed at cutting by half by 2015 the number of people around the world who do not have access to clean drinking water.
]]>A crowd has gathered, as it always does, to watch this momentous event: Wayongo and his crew are drilling a well in a place that looks so dry one wonders if water could possibly be percolating down below. But Wayongo, a public health engineer and well driller for Oxfam, is optimistic.
"We have not struck water, but the formation is giving us courage," he shouts over the roar of the hydraulic drill. "The problem is during the dry season, the water table is very far down."
This will be the fourth deep well Wayango and his crew of five men have drilled recently in the rural areas around Kebkabiya in North Darfur. The water improvements are part of an Oxfam program to help the people in 11 small villages in this region manage as the conflict that has consumed Darfur for more than three years rages on. The initiative also includes constructing latrines and distributing farming tools.
While most of Oxfam's work during the conflict has been geared toward preventing the spread of waterborne diseases among hundreds of thousands of people who have fled from their homes, the agency recognizes that the needs in Darfur extend far beyond the temporary camps to which displaced people have flocked.
"Although there are two million internally displaced people in camps, there are many others remaining in villages who need help too," said Alun McDonald, Oxfam's communications officer based in Khartoum.
And some of them are here on this small hill in Igro. Under a scorching sun, Wayongo is making his second attempt of the day to locate a new source of water for the inhabitants of this village. After drilling about 90 feet down on a nearby rise—and coming up empty—Wayongo decided to move a little closer to a dry river bed and try his luck there.
If he hits water, he'll quickly send a sample to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, to have it analyzed for salt and other contaminants. If it passes the test, the work crew will install a pump and build a platform around the well to keep the water clean when people draw it up.
Wayongo prefers to drill for water during the dry season because he knows that if he does strike it when the water table is at its lowest, then the supply will be a reliable one. Besides, during the rainy season, which typically stretches between June and October, this kind of work is difficult. The rain swamps the dirt tracks that serve as roads, turning them into mud that can swallow heavy trucks loaded with drilling equipment.
But it is not just the rain that makes movement difficult for Wayongo and his team. As with much of Darfur, the area around Kebkabiya is prone to hijackings and militia activity, and is not always safe to travel around, particularly after dark. When things are secure enough for the team to travel to the villages, they work late—and stay where they are.
So, after a hot and dusty day, Wayongo's crew won't be heading to Oxfam's headquarters and their own comfortable beds in Kebkabiya. They'll camp at Igro—and get an early start on the next day's drilling operation.
]]>