In the heart of Aby-Adi, a town in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, which was affected by conflict between 2020 and 2022, 48-year-old Birzaf Gebreabezg’s stood out among the crowd. Dressed in a neat blue dress, she swiftly moved towards a well, a yellow jerrycan in hand. For Birzaf, fetching water is not just a mundane task, but a lifeline in her daily fight for survival.
Birzaf, a mother of 8, originally hails from Humera, a village in western Tigray, from where she fled with all her children, escaping the violence that ravaged the region. What followed was a grueling 450 km journey, through hunger, fear, and exhaustion until she and her children found refuge in a vocational college that had been transformed into a displacement camp; now a sanctuary for over 17,000 displaced individuals. Read more…