An assignment for ChildFund documenting the organization’s efforts to bring clean water to the people of Fentale and Adama Districts in drought-stricken Ethiopia.
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Post Tagged with: "water"
Breaking gender barriers in Jordan
My latest video for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US international aid agency , tells the story of Ra’eda, who is one of the first female plumbers in Jordan. Here Ra’eda explains how she went from being ridiculed for her chosen profession to becoming an in-demand professional.
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Below the Surface
Every year it seems I return to Emali, Kenya to document families experiencing water shortages in the extreme. ChildFund New Zealand is and has been working tirelessly in Emali to provide water access one community at a time. This year villages have been impacted by the El Niño weather pattern that is raging in neighboring Ethiopia (see previous blog entry). With families living in such remote areas, 100% access to the earth’s most essential resource may never be achieved in our lifetime, but it is comforting to see the problem made just a bit smaller each time I return.
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Change in the Air
I feel like I’m getting spoiled taking all these helicopter rides. Aerial footage is definitely worth the effort if you can take the wind burn and the pilot’s bill that comes along with it. Drones work well too, yes – just not when you have 200 square kilometers to cover. Here I document the Millennium Challenge Corporation‘s Senegal Compact, which has rehabilitated highways and markets in the north and south and brought renewed farming abilities to the Senegal River Valley through an irrigation infrastructure overhaul. MCC is a foreign aid agency established by the US Congress that applies new philosophies to the implementation of development assistance with the aim of increasing economic growth. Rogue states and kleptocracies need not apply. Countries must pass a number of indicators including control of corruption, civil liberties, and trade policy to be eligible for a compact. Senegal, being one of Africa’s most stable democracies, had[…]
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Magic in the Water
You won’t believe your eyes! Many families in rural Africa must resort to collecting water from open, dangerous sources which are often shared with domestic livestock. A solution has been found, however, to bring clean and safe water to families in otherwise desperate need using a new purifying process by American consumer products company, P&G. Here, 9-year-old Johnan, of Uganda, instructs us on the proper steps to take to perform this transformative, life giving, magic trick.
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Water by the People
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll quit as soon as the net you’ve given him breaks. It’s not uncommon when driving across rural Africa to see a hand-pump well that has not been used for some time; not because the water supply has been exhausted below, but because a proper system was not put in place for the construction and maintenance of that well. A well is an expensive thing to build, but it becomes even costlier when a community ceases to receive benefit from it. In remote Bukwo, Uganda, most people still draw their water from unclean and unprotected sources like rivers and streams. Because proper hygiene and sanitation practices are not widely followed, the people that use this water are exposed to diseases like diarrhea and typhoid. “It used to take me two hours to go[…]
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Making New Ground
Farmland that had reverted to dust after years of drought is being reclaimed through innovative methods. Thanks to Matemai Mbira Group of Harare, Zimbabwe for the use of their beautiful music in this piece.
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Catching Up | Summer, 2014
See what’s been happening lately in my work and life. Special thanks to Andrew Ladson from MCC for the photos of me from Namibia, and to Lauren Matthews for the wedding video.
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Essential Amharic
If there are any words a faranji, or foreigner, might be likely to learn when visiting Ethiopia, wuha and injera would easily make the top five; the former meaning water in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, the latter not having an English equivalent. Much of my recent time in Ethiopia was spent documenting the problems associated with getting wuha, easily the most fundamental of life’s necessities, but sadly quite hard to come by in a number of places in the world. The video I shot and produced above shows the difficulties that people living in some rural areas of south-central Ethiopia have in accessing the resource. Fast-paced and polished, this video will be used by ChildFund, Australia in an upcoming campaign to bring water to the area. Ethiopia is not entirely water-scarce; I hate to give that impression. There are places in the country where cattle graze in plentiful, green pasture alongside rolling[…]
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Water in a Dry Land
Throughout the world people migrate to large cities in search of better services like education and water. In Jordan, however, when your city is located in the desert, getting enough water for your daily needs can still be a constant challenge. It’s a bit ironic that Jordan, named after the river that makes its western border with Israel, is one of the driest countries on the planet. Living conditions are especially hard in Jordan’s second-largest city of Zarqa, just north-west of Amman. Here residents experience all the hassles and discomforts of a limited and antiquated water system. Not all houses have running water; if you are lucky enough to have it, you probably have it for only a day or two in a given week. In the above video, residents talk about their struggles and hopes for Zarqa’s water system. Precious drinking water is wasted because many municipal pipes, seemingly[…]
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