The last trip to the field was the most difficult. There are a lot of things to say about my latest trip to Ethiopia. I have delayed saying them because of the political situation. The government controls the Internet and listens in on all correspondence, emails, blogs, reporting, etc. People have been kicked out for simply complaining about the food, something as truthful and silly as "I can't take eating any more of this injeera." This is statement all Ethiopians understand, and all ferengis live. The injeera is wonderful, yet fermented. It is the cause of much gas in those not accustomed to eating it regularly. Therefore critical thought and an expose of life in Ethiopia and how it maybe is being handled are always considered a political threat by the government.
My last trip was to Seraro. We got up at our usual 6 am drive time and headed out on to the busy truck traffic filled smoked road. Now to understand this smog is difficult unless you experience it. It is all car exhaust. It is thick, it burns, and it lasts for 2 hours until one is far enough from Addis that the trucks have diverged towards their destinations.
Last year I didn't get sick. This time of the nearly six weeks I was here, about three of them I was sick. Monday morning was getting to be the worst. Cramps, nothing staying in me etc, coupled with smog and a long drive. I was in a bad mood and putting up a good front, but my friends knew something was wrong. Challa, the sanitation head for CRS took me to a pharmacy and got me a protozoa and giardia killing drug. He is the equivalent of an RN with surgical experience.
We made a stop at Meki and spoke to the people of MCS. We told them our plans of visiting Seraro, grabbed a few names and numbers and headed back onto the road. It was now 11a.m. with 4 more hours of driving, south.
By now the conditions of drought had rung the bell of the world. At CRS headquarters there had been daily emergency meetings. Because the system of Ethiopia is such that the government controls everything, an emergency, or a drought doesn’t exist unless the government says so. Thus, until about 3 weeks into my trip, while it was the topic most people were speaking about, nothing officially could be done until the government acknowledged the drought and requested help. An NGO cannot simply go to an area and provide food or water without permission. My trip into the desert had been a first foray into the assessment of life with no water. The past trips had helped CRS leadership confirm that this was not a normal year. Going to Seraro besides continuing the work on the business model, was also an initial assessment of the drought.
The path to Seraro takes one through Sheshamene, a town adopted by Ras Tafarians. This is weird to the Ethiopians, and it was weird to me. In the middle of a bit of a topographical rise, more green dark trees, almost forest, suddenly hotels appear advertising themselves as Rasta getaways and restaurants. We spent the night there.
Seraro is perhaps 60 kilometers away, 27 of which are down a pot-holed, dirt road. Remember my stomach and need to put on a good face? I thought we would never get there. Because of the conditions of the road this took us a long time. At one point the driver and Challa got out to decide the best route around a crater-sized pothole, mud, and rocks.
We arrived. Because of the late time we only made an appointment for the following morning. We then drove back. I have never been so thrilled to get into a hotel room. My visa is good for another year and a half. I mention this because as a ferengi unless you have a resident card or a visa that allows you to work, you get charged double. Well at check-in they wanted to charge me the double price - but I had the fancy visa. After much talking, checking with a manger in another office, thoughts of me saying, “well how much for the bathroom?” it all got settled.
The hotel was a tropical paradise, replete with a dance floor and club in the central courtyard. It wasn't the season so it wasn't really full. But the music was loud, maybe Jamaican. Bars with rattan and bamboo furniture surrounded the dance floor. Challa and I sat under a bamboo cabana and had tea and fries. I wondered if even that was too much.
I went to bed early. I don't remember what was on TV but I do remember that I was oddly enthralled by it. I think it was a French movie that made me get nearly to tears. I blame my stomach.
The drugs worked by morning and I began to eat again. I bought 72 balloons for our return to Seraro. It had been obvious that kids were going to play a large role in the visit. This area was the definition of rural poor, and there always seems to be a lot of children. Along the way to Seraro, there are tiny, or tinier villages, all subsistence farm land. There were many young kids helping this process - more than adults.
This was harvest time. The weather is and was misleading. It had rained the day before. The green of the land was in full force. However, the rain was sporadic, the ground rich, but not able to produce enough without out the regular rains. The corn was half the height it should have been, without about only 20% close to flowering. This means that they had a few weeks at best before harvest, and that would be much less than expected. Even if the rains were to suddenly come, there was no guarantee that the production, late, would be enough.
We arrived. The village was transfixed by me. The village elders greeted me. I thanked them and introduced myself, Challa proud to explain who and why about me. The people brought chairs for us. We were placed on the grass in front of several huts. The village, 60 adults? sat in front of us, the children sprawled on their parents, or just on the cow dunged grass.
Open defecation had been a huge problem here. However, because of the work CRS and MCS has been doing, the government had presented an award to Seraro for it's community effort. (more on the irony later). Cows roamed freely, in and out of huts even.
The Seraro town meeting was filled with laughter and respect. However, the subject was not. We, I, because I was very much the honored guest, each of the two elders on either side of me, and Challa to the right of one, were told about the progress they felt they had made because of the ArborLoos they had built. They claimed there was less diarrhea and the things they had planted had been doing well, but... No water, no rain.
The rain we knew about; about the water, we were not clear. There were wells around, one that was supposed to have been finished. The way things work in Ethiopia, is that as the projects come to completion the government takes over. Well that's not exactly it. The government is very much a partner from the beginning, sometimes more silent then others. Everything must be approved prior to starting, for example, no well can be drilled or dug if the government says there is no need for water in a certain area. This is politics. Politics that says "nothing is wrong here" and politics that say "why help people who oppose me."
So, while the wells had been dug, some completed and now broken, others not, the people of Seraro either walked 10 hours a day to get clean water, and they make the trip a lot, or they use containers to gather the water from stagnate malarial puddles in fields or along the side of the road. The parasites are obviously not wanting for food. The stomachs and faces attested to this. And here is the irony of the award the government bestowed upon the people.
My last trip was to Seraro. We got up at our usual 6 am drive time and headed out on to the busy truck traffic filled smoked road. Now to understand this smog is difficult unless you experience it. It is all car exhaust. It is thick, it burns, and it lasts for 2 hours until one is far enough from Addis that the trucks have diverged towards their destinations.
Last year I didn't get sick. This time of the nearly six weeks I was here, about three of them I was sick. Monday morning was getting to be the worst. Cramps, nothing staying in me etc, coupled with smog and a long drive. I was in a bad mood and putting up a good front, but my friends knew something was wrong. Challa, the sanitation head for CRS took me to a pharmacy and got me a protozoa and giardia killing drug. He is the equivalent of an RN with surgical experience.
We made a stop at Meki and spoke to the people of MCS. We told them our plans of visiting Seraro, grabbed a few names and numbers and headed back onto the road. It was now 11a.m. with 4 more hours of driving, south.
By now the conditions of drought had rung the bell of the world. At CRS headquarters there had been daily emergency meetings. Because the system of Ethiopia is such that the government controls everything, an emergency, or a drought doesn’t exist unless the government says so. Thus, until about 3 weeks into my trip, while it was the topic most people were speaking about, nothing officially could be done until the government acknowledged the drought and requested help. An NGO cannot simply go to an area and provide food or water without permission. My trip into the desert had been a first foray into the assessment of life with no water. The past trips had helped CRS leadership confirm that this was not a normal year. Going to Seraro besides continuing the work on the business model, was also an initial assessment of the drought.
The path to Seraro takes one through Sheshamene, a town adopted by Ras Tafarians. This is weird to the Ethiopians, and it was weird to me. In the middle of a bit of a topographical rise, more green dark trees, almost forest, suddenly hotels appear advertising themselves as Rasta getaways and restaurants. We spent the night there.
Seraro is perhaps 60 kilometers away, 27 of which are down a pot-holed, dirt road. Remember my stomach and need to put on a good face? I thought we would never get there. Because of the conditions of the road this took us a long time. At one point the driver and Challa got out to decide the best route around a crater-sized pothole, mud, and rocks.
We arrived. Because of the late time we only made an appointment for the following morning. We then drove back. I have never been so thrilled to get into a hotel room. My visa is good for another year and a half. I mention this because as a ferengi unless you have a resident card or a visa that allows you to work, you get charged double. Well at check-in they wanted to charge me the double price - but I had the fancy visa. After much talking, checking with a manger in another office, thoughts of me saying, “well how much for the bathroom?” it all got settled.
The hotel was a tropical paradise, replete with a dance floor and club in the central courtyard. It wasn't the season so it wasn't really full. But the music was loud, maybe Jamaican. Bars with rattan and bamboo furniture surrounded the dance floor. Challa and I sat under a bamboo cabana and had tea and fries. I wondered if even that was too much.
I went to bed early. I don't remember what was on TV but I do remember that I was oddly enthralled by it. I think it was a French movie that made me get nearly to tears. I blame my stomach.
The drugs worked by morning and I began to eat again. I bought 72 balloons for our return to Seraro. It had been obvious that kids were going to play a large role in the visit. This area was the definition of rural poor, and there always seems to be a lot of children. Along the way to Seraro, there are tiny, or tinier villages, all subsistence farm land. There were many young kids helping this process - more than adults.
This was harvest time. The weather is and was misleading. It had rained the day before. The green of the land was in full force. However, the rain was sporadic, the ground rich, but not able to produce enough without out the regular rains. The corn was half the height it should have been, without about only 20% close to flowering. This means that they had a few weeks at best before harvest, and that would be much less than expected. Even if the rains were to suddenly come, there was no guarantee that the production, late, would be enough.
We arrived. The village was transfixed by me. The village elders greeted me. I thanked them and introduced myself, Challa proud to explain who and why about me. The people brought chairs for us. We were placed on the grass in front of several huts. The village, 60 adults? sat in front of us, the children sprawled on their parents, or just on the cow dunged grass.
Open defecation had been a huge problem here. However, because of the work CRS and MCS has been doing, the government had presented an award to Seraro for it's community effort. (more on the irony later). Cows roamed freely, in and out of huts even.
The Seraro town meeting was filled with laughter and respect. However, the subject was not. We, I, because I was very much the honored guest, each of the two elders on either side of me, and Challa to the right of one, were told about the progress they felt they had made because of the ArborLoos they had built. They claimed there was less diarrhea and the things they had planted had been doing well, but... No water, no rain.
The rain we knew about; about the water, we were not clear. There were wells around, one that was supposed to have been finished. The way things work in Ethiopia, is that as the projects come to completion the government takes over. Well that's not exactly it. The government is very much a partner from the beginning, sometimes more silent then others. Everything must be approved prior to starting, for example, no well can be drilled or dug if the government says there is no need for water in a certain area. This is politics. Politics that says "nothing is wrong here" and politics that say "why help people who oppose me."
So, while the wells had been dug, some completed and now broken, others not, the people of Seraro either walked 10 hours a day to get clean water, and they make the trip a lot, or they use containers to gather the water from stagnate malarial puddles in fields or along the side of the road. The parasites are obviously not wanting for food. The stomachs and faces attested to this. And here is the irony of the award the government bestowed upon the people.
They told us what they ate, and here is where my sunglasses came in handy. They had been living on cabbage and this parasite water. They had been hit by cases of TB and chronic diarrhea. A family had died recently from starvation leaving a young baby that a member of the community had taken in. Starvation was now a reality to them. They laughed. They were enthusiastic in the face of things we just don’t understand.
After thanking and shaking hands and pictures, I gave out balloons. They nearly took my hands. The children and the parents swarmed me. When they were all gone they clutched them and took guarded positions and then tried to blow them up. We were saluted with waving semi-inflated balloons as we left.
So that was my last visit to the field. I have not said enough, but am at a loss for how to describe the people justly and without prejudice. It is a wonderful place Ethiopia. And a tragedy like I could and still cannot grasp. In many ways it is centuries behind the rest of the world. The big cities have much of the modernity one would expect but it is slammed into this old world poverty with out translation. I had many discussions with people about this. I knew and confirmed that in many ways I am naïve, which although not shocking is shocking. One tries to read and prepare ones self for this, but cannot.
Driving through the desert it is clear that existence is ridiculous by western standards. The heat and lack of any real resources would seemingly dissuade anyone from living there. Yet it is tradition. Why. The pastoral people only recently had to face the effects of de-forestation, so until a generation ago this really wasn’t a concern, there was always a place to move with better resources.
However what is not clear and not easy to understand is how the poor, how the country, has been stuck in another era. There is money that comes into Ethiopia. There is pride. The people are the most generous and gentle people I have met. One man pointed to how Ethiopian’s stand out in Africa for their ambition and drive, and are much more successful at getting international positions with NGOs than others.
This trip I found myself getting very frustrated and annoyed. Anger came later. I was sick, and therefore tired much of the time, so I initially attributed it to that. But, as time went on, I began to discover something I hadn’t put my thoughts on before. The complexities of the systemic tentacles of life in Ethiopia have created a culture that is at once passive, ambitious, generous, reliant, and Kafkaesque.
The men and women of the government at the local level are some of the most dedicated people on earth. They are a part of the community. They are working for the community, often with little pay or reward. This changes as one goes higher, not universally, but that’s where it starts. There are myriad examples of bureaucratic non-sense. A rig for drilling water wells was stuck in customs for more than a year because the wrong stamp, by an official, was put on it. Every one agreed that this was the case, but that agreement didn’t get it out of customs. Taxes, heavy taxes are put on items that come into the country, often through donation, to assist the country. People do their jobs so as not to lose them, not to be noticed.
This is not new. However, the country is filled with NGOs and aid agencies, internationals, all trying to assist in a transition into a modern world without disease and starvation. The policy is such that NGO’s must have their work force comprised of a majority of nationals. This means that the communities of internationals and Ethiopians are integrated in the work. This is not a place where it is ‘us and them.’ The people I worked with, for, are empowered and passionate about their country and the work they are doing and must do for it. So there is a culture clash within the culture. The drive for improvement and this pervasive systemic collapse of forward movement caused by, not a doomsday attitude, but a reality in which at every turn there is a block to progress. If it is not a regulation it is the drought or flood, etc.
And yet, I spent much of the last two weeks angry. Angry that this exists. That it is not unique to Ethiopia. Angry that while I was speaking with people about how they would make it another few months my country was embroiled in debt ceiling death match. I was angry that for as much promise my project held it was years from producing any sort of dramatic result, and dramatic results is what is needed in this country. According to the official figures, 4.2 million people were suffering in the drought. How many of those were starving, a lot, but this is not counted officially. 4.2 million is a low number.
As one can probably tell, this trip had a profound effect. But what that is … Why are we struggling with money issues today? All these Ipads, smartphones, movie budgets, and people are living on cabbage or less.
As I was driving up a winding cliff side road into the desert, I kept saying to myself why do people live here? Why have they not moved? But the answer is, of-course more complicated, that there isn’t any opportunity or even awareness of something better to be had. Why? I got, and get angry thinking of the reasons. The incredible illogic by decision makers, the roadblocks of bureaucracy, and the culture of passive acceptance – yet this is wrong, the people of Ethiopia have ambition, and are driven to succeed, and one sees examples of this everyday. Why though is aid still needed in seemingly the same regions, for seemingly the same issues? I wanted to scream during these moments of thought. Scream in frustration at not being able to find the answer. Scream in realization that the willingness to latch on to quick answers will get me and everyone else nowhere, or right where we are. It is not as simple as saying Ethiopia is addicted to aid, or that the NGO/Western/Eastern agencies are to quick to end involvement in projects or not good at empowering and creating sustainability. It’s something horrific in its complexities. Lakes and aquifers are drying up? Why? Forests are gone which ruins soil, which begins the cycle of water depletion, crop destruction and lack of production, which and on and on. Foreign companies are buying land and hiring people to operate flower farms, gravel mines, and other such things at low wage and less than perfect safety conditions. Disease continues to strike, continuing the spiral of poor hygiene and poverty, as health care is less than available to all, which means the spread of infection is prevalent, which burdens families, which limits work which, and on and on……. And so one ends up incredibly frustrated and angry and wonders how to break the cycle and push forward a path out of this incredible challenge that people face in this land, which is only a small part of a larger continent that suffers many of the same intricacies of the fabric of poverty.
I, with the help of my new friends, friends I will never forget for their perseverance and dedication, have produced a small business model, which will help a few people, perhaps someday many. It will be tested and put into practice over the next year. Of this I am proud, and immediately ashamed of the pride. I wish it were the magic wand that would change this beautiful suffering country into a beautiful healthy country. It is not. The world needs that magic wand, not just Ethiopia. Unfortunately the countries like Ethiopia are like the poor of west in this world system. They are the ‘unfortunate’ sacrifice the wealthiest push aside along their way to success. Until this need to be on top of the mountain of success is transformed into a more humanistic ideal, where people are able to live in some manifestation of harmony, poverty and disease will continue to wreak Darwinian havoc on those not able to compete for the top, and that population will grow.
I smile with shame at my happiness for my experiences in Ethiopia. I left defeated, challenged, and alive knowing that I may never return, and wishing I could go when the whim struck me again. The whim. I made the most incredible friends, and met people who have inspired me in all my naïveté. My brain has been scrambled.
Ethiopia is now for me a torrid affair one has in their early 20’s, powerful, grasping, full of love, lingering, and in many ways lost. My feelings will evolve, they will be blown away in winds by personal challenges of life. I will always be thankful that I was let in to their lives, and hopeful that I was a positive force in their lives.
