To get to Robit, you don’t really drive on a road per se, but mostly just follow the footpaths that cut between the fields and the tire tracks of the last vehicle to have gone that way.  You make the best speed you safely can, but often you have to slow to a crawl as you bounce through deep ruts or over bumps, or dodge dogs snapping at the tires, people walking to and from the markets and fields, donkeys laden with various burdens, and the occasional cow or goat that refuses to yield.  Without fail, every time we passed a group of houses, laughing children would pour out, shouting and waving.  It seemed strange to think that this would be the most exciting thing that would happen to them all day, but then I recalled my own son waving at every train that he saw when he was young, and how it made his day if an engineer happened to wave back.  We could do no less.

Finally we arrived at Robit, a dusty stretch of mud houses set back in the trees.  As we had seen all along the way, the children ran out, shouting "You! You! You!" at us (strangely, in the areas out of "town," they always yell "Ciao! Ciao!")  Unfortunately, we arrived too late to join the villagers at their church service as we had hoped, but we were still excited to finally be there.  We drove all the way to the river that divides the village, and then turned into the school yard. 

Robit has seen a lot of changes in the past few years.  Just as "Water to Thrive" worked with the non-governmental organization ODA (Oromia Development Association) to build the wells in Sendafa last week, "Glimmer of Hope," a large Austin-based charity, has been working with a local NGO, the Organization for the Rehabilitation and Development of Amhara (ORDA) to in Robit.  In addition to partnering with "Water to Thrive" to dig a deep-borehole well, "Glimmer" has broken ground on new school buildings and a Medical Extension Office in the past year.  Our mission was to check on the status of those projects.

As soon as we got out of the trucks we saw part of one project underway.  About a hundred men, women, and children were standing in a line near the edge of the schoolyard, passing buckets of cement from hand to hand.  As we approached, we saw nine huge holes in the ground.  In the bottom of each, a wooden form had been built, and the cement was being poured into these form.  we were told that these would be footings for a twelve foot water tower that would provide pressure to eight new water stations once the well was complete.  Because the area floods every year, it was necessary to construct these massive footings to prevent the tower from sinking into the rain-softened ground.

In the United States, such large excavations would be done "quick and dirty" using heavy equipment; in fact rather than nine holes, one large one would likely be dug.  But these holes were perfectly square, their sides perfectly vertical.  It was really a beautiful piece of work.  We were amazed to learn that not only had the holes been dug entirely by volunteers, but they had been dug BY HAND.  Furthermore, all this precise work had been done in only the past seven days.

 

Next we toured some of the school buildings.  They are rather spare by American standards, but much better than their stick-and-mud predecessors of 1969.  On many of the outside walls, large maps, English lessons, times tables, science diagrams, and historical information have been painted; this is an ingenious way of dealing with a shortage of charts and maps that might not hold up as well.  Inside the classrooms, children sit three to a bench in front of narrow desks (in some rooms, the desks were jumbled and in disarray; we later found out that the reason for this was that because of shortages, they are shared with another nearby school, carried there and back daily.) 

 

There are approximately sixty students to a class.  On the desks in one room, cards had been taped down at each place, with Amharic lettering.  Our translator, Adona, explained that each showed the student’s name and "vision" of his future.  We were pleased and impressed that, rather than seeing themselves as future sports stars or entertainers, these students wanted to be called "doctor," "teacher," "engineer."

 

While the new buildings are quite nice, they are largely empty.  There is little or no laboratory equipment at the high school, and the library has not yet received its books.  Students share tattered texts, consumables like workbooks are almost nonexistent, and basic items like paper and pens are in short supply.

In one room, we found a young man spending his Sunday afternoon studying.  Although he was clearly in his mid-twenties, everyone has "agreed" that he is twenty, the maximum age to attend the school.  In a place like this, you don’t allow ambition to be denied.  Speaking through Adona, the man revealed that he had been a lackluster student a few years before, when his class was visited by Meredith’s father, Dick Moeller, on an early Water to Thrive trip.  Mr. Moeller had challenged the students to become teachers, to help their nation by helping to build the next generation.  It was that visit that had inspired the young man to study harder, and he now had plans to become a teacher in that very village.

 

From the school, we went out to the site of the new deep borehole well.  Although Robit has several hand-dug wells of the type constructed in Sendafa last week, they are not adequate for the needs of the 6000 men, women, and children who live there (with more in the surrounding area.)  To supply sufficient water, it was determined that the new 2500-feet-deep well would have to provide 3.7 liters per minute.  In fact, it produces over 10 liters per minute, so it should be able to keep up with growth of the village for some time to come.  They’re still waiting for the submersible pump, and the government is somewhat behind on bringing electricity to the site (their part of the agreement) but once in place, the well will be a great boon to Robit.

After we left the well, we visited the new medical facilities just outside the village.  Unfortunately, although the buildings were completed a couple of months ago, they are still not operating at full capacity, mostly because of chronic shortages of basic supplies.  Records are kept of every visit and the treatment given, but because no individual patient files are kept, it can be difficult and time-consuming to search back through the records for a medical history.  Even more frustrating, much of the equipment that the center has been given remains unusable, again because of inadequate electrical service.

However, back in the village we met an inspiring young man.  Mengiste Habtu runs his own private clinic from a two-room building of sticks and mud, with a sheet for a door and a dirt floor, just like the homes beside it.  Although he too is always short of supplies, the twenty-six year-old man dispenses whatever health care he can with what he has.  Asked why he does not try to work at the clinic, Habtu explained that he cannot support his family on what the government pays doctors there.  Although he now has a four-year degree, he is studying at night to become a full-fledged medical doctor. In the meantime, he desperately needs a microscope; much of the disease in Robit is caused by parasites, and without being able to examine blood and stool samples to determine the exact organism, he must treat every case crudely, with broad spectrum medicines.  We promised to try to secure one for him, and on our way out, most of us managed to slip him a few hundred birr to purchase medicines.

The skies were now beginning to threaten rain.  Rather than risk getting caught in it and stuck somewhere, we bid goodbye to our new friends, promising them we would return the next day.  We piled back into the trucks and began the bumpy two-hour trip back to Gondar, the children giving us an escort to the edge of the village.

Dohna’hun, Larry