The words captioned above were uttered today in a prayer full of tears for the poor villagers of Awo in the Irob county of northwestern Ethiopia, suffering from prolonged, severe drought.
Today Fr. Eyassu [Joshua], the missionary Priest who sent the e-mail of February 19, explained the plight.
The villagers of his native Awo must queue for sometimes 20 hours just to receive a cup of muddy water from the well that hasn’t dried up in the last year and a half.
The only other well that supplied the ca. 2,800 villagers dried up, he informed, some time ago.
These poor souls are dying of thirst, for want of a deep well to supply them.
The region has suffered years of drought, on and off for some 40 years, as some reckon it. But the last year and an half has been the worst, the driest. The region around Awo has been turned almost into a desert.
Father Eyassu put it this way:
“What humiliates me is that the situations of my family in home Alitena. I am looking to the sky not hear their call to funeral because of famine. God with the needy.”
[Alitena is the state-region, Father’s homeland. “Looking to the sky …” means that he is “lifting (his) eyes to heaven, praying not to have news of the death by starvation of his suffering family there, but that God preserve them.” ed. – gpl]
After consulting with other Directors, NCCL’s Executive Director announced the decision to assist the villagers to dig a well, pending further investigation.
Looking East 