July 8, 2011
The morning came early. We met at breakfast. The same multi bread and eggs thing. Coffee. Water. And back to the car and to Water Action’s office by 7:30. We conversed for a few and then we were out to the next place.
This drive took us higher. It was about a 30 minute drive up a fairly normal road then something akin to a fire road into a village nestled fairly high up. We got out met someone who was not introduced, until later, Hassan. He led us up a steep incline that rose 500 meters. By the time we got to our destination the air was thin.
There is a spring up there that through Bekele’s help Tom and Ayulumn turned into a water point. It is complete with trough for animals and a separate point for drinking water. I am not sure of the elevation but it was somewhere near 10,000 feet. However, people came from higher to gather water and take it up higher. Unbelievable. There were huts scattered up and around. What I couldn’t figure was what they ate. Not much was growing, there were some cows, very skinny, and goats of course. Very hard and very difficult to understand. The water was a huge benefit for them. Clean and plentiful, but wow.
We then went down stopped half way to watch as some young men, boys really, built a holding tank. Beautiful views.
Back at the village we were taken in and given coffee by one of the locals. Wonderful. Just amazing stuff the coffee. The house was set up above the road. Not small, fairly large. Almost no furniture other than what we sat on. A back room that went somewhere. They burned incense for us. Roasted the coffee right there and then crushed it and poured boiling water on it.
We then split up. Bekele, Hassan, and Tom went to another high spring. Ayulumn and I went to speak with the health clinic. They had left for a meeting in Kolmbucha, so we sat and watched kids, and sat and then they returned.
It was now very hot. If you haven’t figured it out, Addis is not hot, so every time I leave I go through a shock. We drove to a school and decided where the women’s’ toilet would be located. From there we drove quite a distance through more of the same mountains along a fairly dry river until we came to a bluff overlooking another irrigation scheme. We walked down. The terrain was rolling smoothed and crumbling sandstone, alien like from the sudden rains.
Below they had again created an irrigation area with cement and the labor of those who inhabited the nearby region. Currently the people were drinking the water from the stream. The water was stagnate in some areas, full of nitrogen from human waste, and even had pools of mosquitoes. We measured the speed of the flow. And discussed how to build a sand filtration system. I discovered some small fish and suggested building up one area to create a pond that could over flow but would allow the fish to grow. They are going to do this.
The strangeness of all of this is there is so much work to be done, so much behavior that has to be modified, like teaching people not to use the stream for their toilet, and then not to drink from the stream. Yet, when you look around, without outside help, what would they do. Its been generations of living in the area, Time and weather patterns have taken away what was formally plentiful water sources. They have over forested and now have huge expanses of desert like terrain. And the past governments were happy to let people remain isolated, so outside influence was very minimal.
We returned from this area back to the first village. The plan was to speak to the local farming organization and see how we could work together. In the mean time we went into the local tej house. I instantly made every one happy. Ferengi’s don’t drink in their village, and they sure don’t drink tej. I have a few words of thanks mainly which I spoke. This, I was told would be day they talked about for a long time. The village kids spontaneously serenaded me with some sort of kid nonsense song. I asked what they were singing. Everyone agreed they were making up words.
We finished and spoke a few words to the farmers, who were grateful that we even approached them. They said they were committed to making life better so any idea was welcome, they would work.
Again it was late in the day without food and now tej, altitude changes and such were wearing me down. We had a non descript lunch and then we parted to our rooms to take an afternoon nap. Which I gladly did.
We met for a final beer with Water Action at the brewery and then retired to a relatively early night.
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