On Tuesday, July 5 water began gushing from a newly dug well in Burayu, a village in Ethiopia. The project was funded through the efforts of Beacon East in PEI. Mensur Sharif photo
Each time they turn on their kitchen tap at their home in Clearspring, PEI Marion and Jim Harris think of the people in Ethiopia who struggle daily to bring water to their families. Charlotte MacAulay photo
Women and girls from the village of Burayu in Ethiopia collecting a trickle of water from a rock face.
Each time they turn on their kitchen tap at their home in Clearspring, PEI Marion and Jim Harris think of the people in Ethiopia who struggle daily to bring water to their families. Charlotte MacAulay photo
Each time Jim and Marion Harris turn on the kitchen tap in their Clearspring, PEI home it brings to mind the contrast of their friends’ lives in Burayu where a daily trek for a trickle of water coming out of a rock face will soon be a thing of the past.
On Tuesday, July 5 that changed. Water gushed from a hole dug 120 metres down through rock in the village situated on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
Soon there will be a pump and taps installed so community members, typically women and girls, can fill their water jugs with greater ease than they have ever known.
“The simple things we take for granted here they really value,” Jim said.
The Harris couple are the face of Beacon East, a Canadian-based non-profit organization working with communities surrounding the capital to promote and support the advancement of education, health and sustainable economic opportunities.
The well project was made possible through funds raised right here at home and through partnerships with many other organizations, including the Rotary Club of Montague and Eastern PEI which contributed $4,000.
Marion said being connected with Rotary on the international stage is just one of many phenomenal partnerships which have had a positive affect on their efforts to change lives.
The entire water project came at a cost of $28,000, but Marion is quick to point out just how life changing it will be for the community.
Girls who spent their days taking water to their families will now be able to go to school and women will have time to work.
Seeing the progress after 17 years
Berahanu was just a young boy of 12 when Marion and Jim first encountered him in the streets on their first mission trip to the landlocked African country. He was orphaned and just trying to survive. They purchased him a shoe shine kit.
On Tuesday, July 5 water began gushing from a newly dug well in Burayu, a village in Ethiopia. The project was funded through the efforts of Beacon East in PEI. Mensur Sharif photo
Fast forward to the winter of 2022 and Berahanu, now a young adult with a university education is sponsoring several youth with their own shoe shine businesses, setting them up for the success he accomplished.
“That is the value to a long-term ministry,” Jim said.
“If you went to a different part of the country every time you went you wouldn’t develop these relationships. We really value these friendships.”
That continuity is prominent in other friendships they have developed over the years as well.
Bifa Sena is a pastor in Burayu and was with the couple all through their last trip acting as their interpreter.
He has seen first-hand the benefits the water well and an earlier project of a school has brought to the community.
Women and girls from the village of Burayu in Ethiopia collecting a trickle of water from a rock face.
“Water is very important for not only the women and children, but the whole community,” Bifa said. “It will bring big changes.”
He said having drinking water so close at hand will transform the lives of students at the school and everyone in the village.
But he also talks about the concrete changes in the school, rebuilt with funds raised by Beacon East in 2018.
“The school is supporting many people,” he said, explaining how not only the students benefit from an education, but the teaching jobs also uplift the community.
Part of the school is rented out to a weaver whose rent pays the teachers’ salaries. It is not insignificant that the weaver now has a steady sustainable income.
And now another project, launched this past winter, provides a means for teachers to earn money when the school is closed.
Teachers were supplied with an injera (Ethiopian bread) maker as well as a French fry cooker. They sell their products during the summer months.
“We’re not done yet.”
Marion and Jim have been back on PEI since the end of April, but they are already looking into what can happen with future projects in the area.
Another school in a remote village they visited this go-around is the goal.
Ascuri is about 22 kilometres from the city.
“We had to go about an hour on the main highway just jiggy-jogging through this dry river bed,” Marion said.
They are a community of farm labourers who have never had a school.
Fundraising will continue this summer as plans are in the works for the annual (minus Covid years) Run, Walk, Wheel to take place August 20.
In 2021 the event raised $6,000, funding that went to the well project.
A craft shop opened during the summer season on the Harris property also raises funds for the various projects they are working on with their missions.
“We love it because it has brought people from all across PEI together to donate,” Marion said. Last year $3,000 raised through the craft shop went towards sustaining another project Beacon East is a part of, a coffee roasting business for women in the region.
She hopes to raise as many funds this season.
“It was different this time,” Marion said.
The ravages of war in the northern part of the country are now felt on the city’s streets.
As poverty ridden as the area has been before, it is now much worse with more and more people fleeing the north and ending up in the streets of the capital.
Marion and Jim saw immediately there were people living in more poverty and desperation than they had witnessed other years. People literally dressed in rags and living on the streets.
Marion often thinks of a widow with two young children who had witnessed horrific acts of violence and suffered injuries themselves.
Since returning home she has learned the widow has been given a job in the hospital where the children are receiving treatment.
The abject poverty only serves to spur the Harrises on.
“We are more determined than ever to help,” she said. “We plan to go back.”
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