A walk for water

Village in Nepal to benefit from student’s Sunday hike

Ellyse Brooks
Bachelor of Arts student
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

I bush-bashed from Swansea Heads, past Catherine Hill Bay and into Wybung Head on a hot and blowy Sunday. That’s 21 kilometres. I walked with containers of water over my shoulder alongside 20 other students from Avondale College of Higher Education. We walked for change. We walked for water.

Students carrying water on walk

Avondale students carried containers of water on their 21-kilometre Fit to Drink walk.

I almost caught myself complaining about the unbearableness of it all, then I had a flashback.

Four months before Fit to Drink, the name Avondale student mission club COSMOS gave to the walk, I tried to carry 30 litres of water on my head, Nepali-style. I could walk barely five metres while my 12-year-old friend walked with a full container at a steady pace. She does this every day. She held my hand as she showed me around her family’s home and its surrounds in the village of Hoxe east of the capital, Kathmandu.

My Development Field Experience classmates and I travelled to Nepal in June and July. We traversed 19 of its 75 districts to visit 15 villages, all beneficiaries of Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) projects. Hoxe would benefit from a COSMOS donation if the villagers developed a plan and received professional local advice to fund a water project.

Fit to Drink has raised more than $5000 for Hoxe. With further consultation and follow-up, COSMOS will help make the collection of safe drinking water an easier task for the villagers.

What did I learn from this uncomfortable coastal walk? We can all do something to change the world, one step at a time.

Tags:

One Response to “A walk for water”

  1. Danijela Schubert says:

    Excellent story—a great way for young people to walk in someone else’s shoes and appreciate the blessings of Australia. Hope you share the story on other social media, too.