Miracles in Watertown

In 2008, Catholic Relief Services celebrated 50 years in Ethiopia. A reflection by David Orth-Moore, CRS Ethiopia's country representative at the time:

When I arrived in the mid-90s, Ethiopia was just emerging from several years of drought and famine. We began doing a lot of work in agriculture and natural resource management. The results have been extraordinary.

When I first met Mustafa—who lives in a place called Watertown—he was a hardworking, but clearly poor, farmer. Now he is the president of the local agricultural cooperative.

Our partner, Hararghe Catholic Secretariat, had been working with local communities to build hillside terraces to prevent erosion and also replenish the watershed by containing rainwater long enough for it to be absorbed into the ground. Thanks to the terracing, the water table had risen. And with a simple pump provided by Catholic Relief Services, farmers can grow a variety of crops year round instead of relying on the rain.

The next time I saw Mustafa, he had harvested a crop and made about $800. In fact, the 45 or so families involved in the first harvest had earned enough money to meet their own needs and also purchase roofing sheets for the school.

Now the farmers can irrigate fields that grow food for more than 100 families. And water is so plentiful that Mustafa and the others are renting small pumps to move water farther up the hill so they can cultivate more land.

Background

The majority of Ethiopians are subsistence farmers who depend on their own harvests to feed their families and provide additional income. They have endured five major droughts in two decades.