When Martta Ogwang was 15-years-old, she packed up her meager belongings and walked to the village of Ayera in northern Uganda’s Apac District. She was about to be married and local tradition dictated that she move into her husband’s home after the ceremony.
It was 1985 and Martta was leaving behind one of the few villages in the area that had a functioning hand pump providing the whole community with clean, safe water. Installed by missionaries sometime before her birth, she never gave it or her good health a second thought.
Moving to Ayera would prove to be a rude awakening for the young Martta. One of the first things she learned as a new bride was how to collect water by digging a hole into a nearby swamp. By the end of her first year in the village, she required treatment for typhoid and for a host of other water-related illnesses.
And it was only the beginning. Her first child died at age five from typhoid and she would go on to lose three more children to the same disease, all at age two.
When we spoke with Martta beside her lethal water source, one of her surviving sons was with her.
“He’s being treated for typhoid right now,” she said. “I’m also taking medication. Someone’s always sick with something. Someone always has diarrhea or worms or typhoid. This water is not good.”
There is a health clinic two miles from Ayera and its services are free of charge. However, it often lacks the required medicines meaning the patient must be transported a further nine miles to the nearest hospital. It’s a long way when the only available means of transporting a sick person is to push them on a bicycle. There are private pharmacies that are closer but they are expensive and don’t offer testing which renders them almost useless.
Asked what it would mean to her, her family and her neighbors if Ayera was to get its own borehole, Martta suddenly became too emotional to talk. She tried to say something but couldn’t. She just turned, picked up her jerry can with its rancid contents and started the long walk back to her hut. It would be all anyone got to drink that day.
Ayera is one of the villages Water to Thrive will be bringing clean water to in 2016. For Lent, we are helping Marrta and her family give up dirty water.
When Martta Ogwang was 15-years-old, she packed up her meager belongings and walked to the village of Ayera in northern Uganda’s Apac District. She was about to be married and local tradition dictated that she move into her husband’s home after the ceremony.
It was 1985 and Martta was leaving behind one of the few villages in the area that had a functioning hand pump providing the whole community with clean, safe water. Installed by missionaries sometime before her birth, she never gave it or her good health a second thought.
Moving to Ayera would prove to be a rude awakening for the young Martta. One of the first things she learned as a new bride was how to collect water by digging a hole into a nearby swamp. By the end of her first year in the village, she required treatment for typhoid and for a host of other water-related illnesses.
And it was only the beginning. Her first child died at age five from typhoid and she would go on to lose three more children to the same disease, all at age two.
When we spoke with Martta beside her lethal water source, one of her surviving sons was with her.
“He’s being treated for typhoid right now,” she said. “I’m also taking medication. Someone’s always sick with something. Someone always has diarrhea or worms or typhoid. This water is not good.”
There is a health clinic two miles from Ayera and its services are free of charge. However, it often lacks the required medicines meaning the patient must be transported a further nine miles to the nearest hospital. It’s a long way when the only available means of transporting a sick person is to push them on a bicycle. There are private pharmacies that are closer but they are expensive and don’t offer testing which renders them almost useless.
Asked what it would mean to her, her family and her neighbors if Ayera was to get its own borehole, Martta suddenly became too emotional to talk. She tried to say something but couldn’t. She just turned, picked up her jerry can with its rancid contents and started the long walk back to her hut. It would be all anyone got to drink that day.
Ayera is one of the villages Water to Thrive will be bringing clean water to in 2016. For Lent, we are helping Marrta and her family give up dirty water.
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