May 15th, 2009 | by Coco McCabe
Miriam Aschkenasy and Oxfam Ambassador Emile Hirsch attend a community meeting in Mudzi, Zimbabwe. Photo: Nabil Elderkin / Oxfam America
In April, Oxfam Ambassador Emile Hirsch traveled to Zimbabwe with Oxfam’s Miriam Aschkenasy and Lyndsay Cruz to see first-hand Oxfam’s response to the cholera crisis that has hit the region.
Below, Aschkenasy, Oxfam’s public health specialist, writes about the second day of their five-day trip.
I am always so tired at the end of the day in Mudzi, a region in the northeast part of the country where Oxfam has been working on the cholera outbreak. After a two-hour car ride from Harare we arrived at the Pumpkin Hotel–the only hotel in this region. We settled in (Emile got the suite with the waterbed, and I got the one next door) and had some lunch: Eggs and sadza, a finely ground cornmeal boiled in water.
After lunch, we headed out to look at a bore hole–a narrow well drilled deep into the ground. Mudzi has hundreds of them. They’re the source of drinking water for many people in this rural region. This one was a half-hour-drive away on a bumpy, dry road–and when we arrived, we found hundreds of community members waiting for us.
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March 11th, 2009 | by Coco McCabe
In its second life, a soda bottle becomes a portable hand-washer to fight the spread of cholera in Zimbabwe.
I rode the train into work this morning with a friend who grew up in Malaysia. She now lives a comfortable life north of Boston, as do I. But we’re both keenly aware of how fleeting that comfort can be if you don’t have the means to support it. Could we, as Americans, make do with less? Read the rest of this entry »
March 3rd, 2009 | by Coco McCabe
Poking around the ReliefWeb site the other day, I stumbled on its analytics page—the place where it lists how many visitors come to the site and the kinds of information they might find there. Administered by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ReliefWeb bills itself as a global hub for people who need—or want—to find out what’s happening with humanitarian emergencies around the world. And guess what? In an age of supposed “compassion fatigue,” the number of visitors to the site climbed by 10 percent last year. Read the rest of this entry »
February 24th, 2009 | by Coco McCabe
Villagers work on repairing a broken well, known as a bore hole, in the Mudzi district of Zimbabwe.
I have just returned from Zimbabwe where a cholera outbreak has now sickened more than 80,000 people and killed more than 3,700 of them. Clean water and public health education are critical in fighting the spread of this disease. Oxfam and its local partner, Single Parents Widow(er)s Support Network, are providing both of those things. Below are a couple of audio blogs that capture some of that work.
In the first blog, public health educators are singing a song–one of several they use–to two large gatherings of villagers. The song is in Shona and it’s advising people who use the bush as a bathroom to properly cover their feces afterwards. The second audio blog tells the story of Ronald Marozva, an engineer who travels around rural Mudzi repairing the broken wells so many people depend on.
Cholera Song
Mudzi Water
January 29th, 2009 | by Chris Hufstader
Lilly Ledbetter sued her employer Goodyear 11 years ago because she found out she was not being paid as well as men in the same positions. But the Supreme Court threw out the case because she did not file it within six months of when the discrimination had occurred.
I just saw her on television standing next to President Obama when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which according to this story in the Washington Post will “[expand] the time frame in which workers can sue for discrimination they have experienced based on gender, race, national origin or religion.” Read the rest of this entry »
December 30th, 2008 | by Coco McCabe
As 2008 winds down, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work this year. Here is one of my favorites–with an explanation why. More to come from others.
Loko Dadacha, photographed by Sarah Livingston
In this supposed season of joy, trouble fills our world: a cholera outbreak and widespread hunger in Zimbabwe, a food crisis in Afghanistan that’s threatening five million people, bursts of violence in the eastern provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo that have forced a quarter of a million people from their homes, a conflict in Darfur that has dragged on for nearly six years and wrecked the lives of millions of Sudanese—the list goes on. And that’s the killer. Where is the hope in this bottomless pit of suffering?
I think I know. Read the rest of this entry »
December 9th, 2008 | by Chris Hufstader
Jestina Mukoko, missing since 3 December. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America
December 10 is International Human Rights Day, when we set aside a moment to consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was completed at the UN 60 years ago. This year we can also consider the 18 human rights activists in Zimbabwe who have disappeared in the last month. One of them, Jestina Mukoko, was abducted from her home at five in the morning last Wednesday.
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