Speaking to... Selph

Selph Ihungu Imalo - Arusha village, Tanzania

I first met Gabriella when she was working with an organisation helping to build schools in the community and she asked if I would speak to her about my life. She asked about why my daughter, Angel, was not in school but instead helping me to collect water for our household. I told her, in this community, the role of a female is seen to be in the kitchen, it is seen to provide for our family. 

Upon my daughter turning 10, she could no longer keep on attending school as her help was needed to collect water from the wells. I have collected water for my household for 37 years and it was becoming impossible to carry on. I am HIV positive and I was becoming increasingly more ill. My husband decided that it was no longer safe for me to carry on and that is when the responsibility fell on to my beloved girl, Angel.

Carrying the pots from the well is not easy. It is a 3 hour round trip and you have to take breaks. Every time she left the house each morning to start her journey to the well, I would say a prayer and would worry until she returned. Then she became unwell. She contracted cholera and began vomiting and had diarrhoea. It is impossible to have for girls and women in this community to have good hygiene. We walk long miles, we are dusty and dirty and there are no sufficient facilities. You become helpless when your child is sick. You don’t know what to do. Gabriella came back last year and told me she had started an organisation to help and empower girls and women, by starting projects to build wells closer to our homes. It was then that I told her my daughter had passed away a couple of months before.

I feel so much sorrow and so much guilt that my child has left this world and I am still here but I am now so thankful for the work Empower are doing in my community . Access to clean, safe water enables so many of our girls to start learning again. If one less young child dies because of a water related illness contracted through the collection of water from the wells, this village can become a little happier, and life can become a little easier, each day.

"Donate what you can and come on this journey with us, to empower these African girls today, for a freer and happier tomorrow."