Water for all


  • Photographer
    Claudio Sica
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2008
  • Technical Info
    Fuji PRO 400 Film
Story

Each year, when the dry season reaches its peak in Southern Ethiopia, the Borana herders gather with their livestock around their secular astonishing treasure.
Huge hand-excavated craters, known as “singing wells”, allow them to survive during the long annual droughts, when thousands of people and animals move closer in search for survival.
Every day the young shepherds form human chains, allowing them to reach the depths of the well and bring up the water. Their hard work is accompanied by a song which seems to draw the great herds as they slowly come near, after days of walking across a dry and dusty land.
Here we can see a unique water management system that allows the Borana shepherds to manage the small quantity of available water as the property and right of everyone.
Nobody can be denied to access water, neither the herders of an enemy tribe in need.
While we can see all around the world actions towards a privatized control over water resources and the access to drinkable water is still not considered a fundamental human right, the Borana deserve a special attention for the extraordinary way in which they guarantee general and indiscriminate access to water in one of the driest inhabited regions on earth.

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