Walk for water charity cut short

Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn.

After 5,000 miles and 18 months, Amy Russell is done walking.

The 24-year-old Manchester native and founder of the charity Walking4Water has ended her trek through Africa, six months and 2,000 miles earlier than planned.

Health problems and political unrest in her planned destination of Egypt caused her and walking partner Aaron Tharp to stop their walk, she said. They plan to fly home Sunday.

“I guess ‘officially’ we ended in Negele, Ethiopia,” she said via Facebook chat from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. “Random town ... but the point where everything plus people throwing rocks at us every day just, where we decided to be done.”

Russell and Tharp, 26, of Trenton, Ohio, were the last two walkers standing from a journey that was supposed to include about 10 people.

It was designed to call attention to the lack of access to clean water in developing countries. The walk has raised about $10,000 for charity: water, a New York-based group that funds drinking water projects in developing countries.

Most of the other would-be walkers backed out before Russell’s journey began in South Africa in February 2012. A third member of the team, 25-year-old Marty Yoder of Elkhart, Ind., who had been driving the support vehicle, went home with health problems when the team was in Mozambique.

That left Russell and Tharp with their shoes and backpacks. They camped or stayed with missionaries or local families, traveling north through South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. Russell went through seven pairs of shoes and lost about 40 pounds.

“The biggest challenge was probably just living in constant instability, we never stayed in one place very long,” Russell said. “So every day, we had to find food, had to find water, had to find a place to stay. Always dealing with a language barrier, always changing circumstances. Dealing with that mentally was probably the hardest.”

They had physical problems as well. Russell contracted malaria in Mozambique. They both got sick a number of times from drinking brackish water, and Tharp developed knee problems, Russell said.