Bishikiltu Water Point At Work

One of the first communities Water 1st ever visited in Ethiopia was Bishikiltu. Scenes of women gathering water from Mara River appeared in our first films. Few images do a better job of communicating the global water crisis than pictures of women and girls filling containers with the brown Mara River water and carrying them the 5 kilometers home.

When we visited Bishikiltu in Feb 2012 to see how their 2-year old project was operating, we dropped in on a public water point at 4 pm, the start of the afternoon hours of operation. A number of women came to the water point to fill 5 gallon containers in the 20 minutes we were there. One of those women was Tagetu. We asked her where she lived. She said she lived just 2 minutes from the water point. We asked her where she collected water before the water point was completed. She said the Mara River. It used to take her 3 hours to collect water and the water she was collecting was a major health hazard to her family members.

Tagetu expressed her enormous relief and gratitude for the Bishikiltu project, which we want to share with you – the Water 1st community. Your support made this project possible as well as the Ilamu Muja project and the Kelecho Gerbi project. Together, those three projects are bringing safe water to 11,800 people in rural Ethiopia. And two additional projects serving 4,500 people are underway. Your efforts are transforming an entire woreda – the Ethiopian equivalent of a county or a township. It’s amazing the impact we can have when we pool our resources and direct them to a well-conceived, well-implemented project.

Bishikiltu water point in operation

Gathering water at the Mara River (2006)

Tagetu and her daughter, Burtucal, filling their water container at a tap just 2 minutes from home - a world of difference from her life just 2 years ago!