For Yirafu the spring at the Zoma stairway is a delicious refreshment on the way to the market. She must descend 749 steps to get from the plateau into the valley.

As far as the people who live here can remember, there has always been only one way for the 8,000 inhabitants of the Zoma plateau to reach the market at Alem Ketema: a hazardous trail, comparable to an animal track in the Alps. Nobody has kept count of how many people met their demise here.
One day Karlheinz Böhm stood at the bottom end of the trail. Once again there had been a casualty: a family father had slipped and fell as he drove his ox down the path to the market.
Spontaneously Karlheinz Böhm said this simple sentence: We must build a stairway. And they did indeed build a stairway: 749 wide steps with a sturdy railing. They are steps that save lives and lead the way to the future.

22-year old Yirafu Ababu from the village of Gred on the Zoma plateau takes this route twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, to sell her spices on the market.

You can open up new paths for girls like Yirafa: