The wait for water sometimes felt endless. “When the water point, pump, and generator faced difficulty, it took a long time to fix,” recalls Feleke Abera, a resident of Wita, a rural kebele (village) in south-central Ethiopia. “Sometimes it took up to three months.”
During these stretches, obtaining enough water to meet daily needs for Feleke’s household became an endurance contest. “We queued up two to three hours to get water,” he recalls — and even that wasn’t enough. “We were getting water by shift, so the supply of water was not compatible with our demand.”
Today, the situation is much improved, and access to safe water has become more reliable. For the past few years, Feleke and his neighbors have been quietly experimenting with a water supply improvement effort that may one day become a revolutionary solution for water-stressed rural communities across Ethiopia and beyond.
Read the full article on Global Waters on Medium.
