Full Circle

Although meetings here can often be a frustrating and tedious experience, I had two today that not only made me smile like a little girl in a candy store but also reminded me why we chose to come to Ethiopia this year.  


Two of my biggest responsibilities has been to create a safe water program in the four villages we work with and to grow their newly formed women’s groups.  Like all things in public health they have both been a slow and arduous process that often made me question if either would prove effective.  One of my last tasks before leaving is to start drama groups in the villages that will focus on health issues as a tool for increasing education.  Today we met with two of the villages, Ogeya and Gessa, to discuss this new project and at each meeting a great surprise awaited me.  Well, it must have been my lucky day as I showed up for these meetings and saw firsthand just how well everything is taking shape.  If this was back home I would assume both things had been planned in advance, but knowing the way things work here I can safely say it was just dumb luck.

At the first meeting the village chairman asked us about buying more WaterGuard. WaterGuard is an amazing product that if used properly can cut water borne illness in half—which is pretty remarkable seeing as one of the leading causes of deaths in Ethiopia is from water borne diseases.   He said that he would like ten more and immediately people started to pull money from their pockets asking to buy one.  Then my co-worker explained to me that they wanted 10 cases, not 10 bottles….making that 150 bottles. We began this not knowing if anyone
would be willing to spend the money on water treatment, but clearly we were wrong.  So yes, it seems as though this intervention is indeed working, check!

We said our goodbyes and after a nice hike to the road we drove to Ogeya.  As we pulled up I noticed a few of our volunteers were surrounded by a group of women.  I walked up and saw what was going on—the gardens we built is growing extremely well and the women were all there to split up and take home tomato plants.  Not that long ago we had the initial meetings with women about creating these gardens and now they were already seeing the literal fruits of their labor.  I was able to take a quick tour of the rest of the garden and again found myself smiling from ear to ear at what a success this program has been.