More than twenty million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of dying from starvation due the drought. In Ethiopia, each year as many as 250,000 children die from hunger and malnutrition. In 1994, the country faced a total collapse of its infrastructure. More than eighty percent of the population lived off the land. Harvests of crops such as maize and groundnuts were largely gone, and thousands of cattle and other livestock had been parched with thirst. Also, most of the natural springs had dried up. However, people from all around the globe either pleaded ignorance or said, "It is none of my responsibility." But we are all brothers one of another, so we are obliged in conscience to help each other. I'd forgotten that I had even taken the Ethiopian volunteer recruitment test when that call came on a cold January day in 1994. Then, standing in a battered wooden telephone booth in my military quarters in Cologne, Germany, I heard someone say, "Congratulations. You've been accepted." Finally, I was a volunteer in Ethiopia.
             During a period of six weeks, we built up new artesian well pumps 200 kilometers southwest of Djibouti. It was no typical dry season, but the continued aridness had left its mark in this region. Pump water, everyone knows, is clean. Drinking well water will make one sick. Every month, people there die from diarrhea and dehydration. The pump is also where one hears gossip from the women who live on the other side of the village. This trip to the pump may be one's only excuse for going outside of one's Muslim home alone.
             I will always remember the sight of women going to the pumps for water. When a woman carried water on her head, you could see her neck bend outward behind her like a crossbow. Ten liters of water weighs around twenty-two pounds, a fifth of a woman's body weight, and I've seen women carry at least twenty liters in aluminum pots large enou
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