The Life Saver 

G/hiwot Mekonnen

The existence of life with out green plants is just like to construct a building up in the air without any support. Hence green plants are base for life. Some plants and forests which are the constituent of green plants give the beauty of nature.

Forest has got many importance such as : as a home for wild animals, as prevention of erosion, as a raw material for manufacturing process, and as a fuel for domestic purpose.

Human being has got unlimited desire that can not come to an end. To satisfy his wants, he has done many hazardous activities that can destroy the comfortable nature of the earth. Recently, one out of those activities, is deforestation. Deforestation is cutting of trees in massive and change the forest to bare land and the soil no more prevented from erosion.

In my vicinity almost 50% of the people are living from hand to mouth. They are not skilled and this tied them up from being engaged by good jobs. All what they do is work on any kind of job, especially, males on "daily" work and female on cutting trees and sell it as a fuel. From where do you think these female got the wood? It is simple. They got it from nearby forest. Many of these women have been doing this daily. How much trees do you think has this day-to-day activity destroyed? Imagine the destruction and the time took for trees to grow up is not less than eight years. But it is destroyed within a day! This can show us clearly that the "speed" of destruction of forest is approaching the "speed of light". Here we don’t have to blame these ignorant people for what they have done. It is because of two things they are doing this. One they have nothing to live on and the other is they are not aware of the impact of deforestation to the environment.

About five years ago[1992] one organization took some action to bring this hazardous situation to an end, to get these helpless people out of this mess, and to save the coming generation from the coming danger. And I call this organization "life saver".

What did this organization first was studied the surrounding very carefully to find the way to help those women and prevent their usual activity. Fortunately they got one.

As the village so called "Keraniyo" is bounded by two rivers it was suitable for vegetation and they asked "Kebele" to give them the place near to the river and they were allowed and then they gathered those women and employed them to make the land ready for farming purpose(vegetation). Side-by-side this "life saver" organization was operating its primary aim, which making people aware of the impact of deforestation to the environment and the importance of forests. This organization started its task from those women as it is the right place to begin with. It was really hard to make those women lend their ears but the way that the organization use was easy and understandable that those women got the message and this lesson ignite interest in them and now they are planting trees to pay back what they did.

This organization was not limited in that area. It widen its are and initiate people for afforestation taking those women as a sample. And by now half the people knew that they have to use this non-renewable natural resource in the conservative way.

The other observation I observed is about two farming(vegetation) where they established by they the side of the rivers, which bounded my village. One of the rivers has source in the direction of "Tatek" and the other is from different source in the direction of "Kolfe". Both rivers are used for irrigation purpose. The former one is used by those women who are organized by the "life saver" organization. But the later one was used by the farmers who organize themselves 30 years ago. But the surprise is here! The women’s farming is giving profitable vegetation than the other. I wonder why is this so? Yes, it is because the river which come from the direction of "Kolfe", which is the neighborhood of "Asko". In "Asko" there is "Asko leather factory". This factory releases its wastes into the river. When these farmers use this water for irrigation in the sunny season, the water evaporates and the remaining water will be more concentrated will contain more salts than needed for growth of plant and I think this one of the reason for the reduction of their yields. But this is not happening in the women’s farm. This is because that life saver organization had made a very careful observation and studied the river to make sure that there is no pollutant of rivers. This courageous work lit a little hope in preventing the coming disaster. And made way for development of our country.

Here, one thing has to be clear that an empty sack can’t stand upright. It is not only the governmental and non-governmental organization but also each and every citizen has got duty to participate to make the country prosperous.