Walking with water on your head is no walk in the park.
That’s exactly the point that Corissa Tymafichuk and Andrea Payne are trying to prove with their upcoming charity event that expands on their usual Free2Walk against human slavery. Access to potable water has turned many people in Third World countries – mostly women – into walking slaves, endlessly carrying pots of water from wells or other water sources across long stretches of land to bring it home.
That’s why Free2Walk-4Water is so important.
“It’s based off of the idea that oftentimes women in poorer countries have to walk really far to get water and then carry it home. We’re going to have that set up on a smaller scale,” she stated.
Instead of the usual two-kilometre trek en masse around the Perron District, people can now attend the event at Lions Park and have the option of walking in those women’s shoes. There will be buckets of water of various weights ready for the willing and courageous to try and traverse the park to see and feel what it’s really like.
The two organizers learned firsthand the true weight of water last summer when they joined Liam Kachkar on a trip sponsored by Free the Children. They spent 10 days in Mondańa, Ecuador, to assist with a number of community-building projects. At first they thought that a shortage of water would have been the last thing they would see in the village in the Amazonian rainforest.
Unfortunately, the village is set downstream from sewage dumps and mining effluent. Filtered water is shipped in but it’s only for tourists. The residents are left out of the access, leaving a distant well and rainfall their only options.
The organizers want people to have the chance to understand how difficult it is to move water by hand or by head.
“You never really understand it until you have to do it,” she continued, remembering her experiences with a farmer named Maria.
“We walked with her through the jungle to this small, small freshwater place that they had. We carried not huge bottles but definitely heavy on our shoulders. I carried one because it became super heavy uphill through rough paths, trees in the way … back to her place where they would have to filter the water there.”
Sometimes, all she could do was drag the bottles across the ground because she couldn’t bear the struggle any longer. She contrasted that with carrying a milk jug from the store to your car.
“As soon as you actually have to walk a fair distance, it gets very hard and the stakes are high. This is water for you to survive on. These people are also doing that multiple times a day going back and forth. The weight really does get to you. It gets to be quite hard, hard work.”
There were six groups of these Free the Children volunteers that each pledged to raise $4,000 for the village to build its own freshwater well. Funds brought in during this Free2Walk-4Water event will go straight to the cause.
The event will feature free hot dogs, and Rafiki chains and water bottles will be sold for $10 each as well to help boost the drive.
It starts at 6 p.m. on June 9 at Lions Park. She still expects to see about 200 attendees, just like last year’s walk.
“This year it’s going to be more low-key. We just want people to come.”
