ANGOLA, Celina's story
A neighbor of Fatima's (ANGOLA, No More Tears), 13-year-old Celina, is one of those children who has started going to school because of the pipeline. Previously, Celina's life had been dominated by collecting water. She had to walk to the river and back three times a day. Now she can do her chores in a fraction of the time. And her younger brothers and sisters are healthy, so she does not have to nurse them.
UNICEF/ HQ96-1168/Giacomo Pirozzi
Unfortunately, Mabuia remains the exception rather than the rule in Angola. Almost three decades of war have left millions of people without clean water or basic sanitation. A huge task remains: drilling boreholes across the country, constructing major pipelines, establishing a national sanitation education campaign and providing water to schools…
Fatima may be one of the lucky ones. But the facilities she, her children and Celina now have are not a luxury, but a necessity and a right. "A mother must take care of her children," Fatima says, "but we cannot do that when we have only dirty water."
