14 days in Ethiopia

by Laurens de Bever

I just came back from a visit to Ethiopia together with Nina. We took over 4'000 pictures, i.e. on average one every five minutes. I have published a short and an ultra-short selection on Lisa's blog. Here I try to describe a few of my impressions.

I encountered a country with beautiful sceneries and very hearty people, a country with - to my opinion - a great potential, but also with many challenges and contradictions. I describe a few examples, which stoke me particularly, below.

In Arba Minch I met two German students who are doing research on the water quality. One of them told me, that even today about half of all projects fail, which has to do with failing involvement of the local people or failing to take their interests and priorities into account properly. Most places in Ethiopia do not yet have a working water supply. People are transporting their water in 20 litre yellow jerrycans all over the country, even in the biggest cities. With our European mind set we would therefore expect that the construction of water networks would be one of the highest priorities for the people, in order to have safe water supply and save a lot of time and effort at the same time. I was very surprised to hear that the local people often prefer to have satellite television instead of running water. Their argument is that they have lived with the water situation for a long time already and know how to cope with it. Reflecting on this I could see their point of view: they want to be connected to the outside, modern world too - a legitimate desire, which many of them assign a higher priority than improving their water supply.

In Dimeka we went to visit a primary school in a small village, 2.5 hours drive with our off-road cars away. The school has three grades and half a dozen pupils in each grade. The Hamar people living in this area have so far maintained their traditional nomadic way of living, crossing the country with their cowherds in searching for food and water. Sending children to school for them means to make dramatic choices. Every day that a child spends in school is a day missing in learning their complex traditional way of living. After the three years of primary school the pupils have to attend the secondary school with hostel in Dimeka. Since this is 12 hours walking distance from their village, this means that these pupils can only visit their family during the school holidays. After several years having been away from their environment and their family, these pupils have lost or failed to learn the traditional Hamar culture and way of living. Again, with our European mind set we expect that education is key to the development of the population. For the Hamar however, the choice is between education and maintaining their culture. Because of the large distances and the extremely poor infrastructure, the two simply cannot be combined. In Europe we have had several ages to make this kind of transition - in Hamar land this happens within one or two generations. Not an easy choice to make!

The third example is again about water. During the four days we spent in Dhadim (the home base of Lisa) there was no electricity and no running water. Electricity is produced by a diesel generator in the mission compound. With this electricity, water is pumped from a well in the village into three 5'000 litre water tanks located at the highest spot in the mission. From there, the water flows into the network supplying the mission as well as the kindergarten, school and clinic operated by the mission. The generator had broken down and the water reserve in the tanks had almost been exhausted. Without water, the school and the clinic would have to be closed down too. Boniface, Anthony and the sisters had already started to bring in water with yellow jerrycans. However, they have only seven of those and the water needs to be gotten from Yabello, which is half an hour drive one way, i.e. it needs more than one hour to bring in 140 litres of water this way. My estimate is that the kindergarten and school in Dhadim count between 100 and 200 pupils. For comparison: our own little household in Switzerland consumes around 200 litres of water per person and per day!

So why not just get the generator repaired? Easier said than done! The mechanics workshop in Yabello did not have the proper machines and could not do the job completely by itself. Some parts had to be transported for machining to a specialized mechanics workshop in Dila, which is five hours drive away (one way). After having returned to Dhadim on Sunday, Boniface left for Dila on Monday morning at four o'clock in the morning. He came back totally frustrated by sunset. The mechanics workshop in Dila didn't want to do just the machining itself, but wanted to have the entire part to be repaired in order to be able to judge the complete problem. So another guy was sent to Dila on Tuesday again. Additional problem is the language. Ethiopia counts no less than 83 acknowledged languages (not taking into account the dialects). The two official government languages, Amharic and English, are not at all widely spoken. Boniface and the owner of the mechanics workshop in Dila have no language in common to communicate.

When we were driving up to Awassa on Thursday we saw a truck with two new 5'000 litre water tanks driving southwards. Half an hour later we learned that those had just been bought by Sister Annie in Awassa and were now on their way to Dhadim. By installing additional storage capacity, the mission hopes to become less vulnerable to problems like the one described above. If I understood Boniface correctly, one new water tank including transport and installation costs around 20'000 Birr, i.e. CHF 1'000. After having arrived in Addis Abeba on Friday, we received a message from Anthony that the generator was now working again and that the water problem was solved - for the moment at least.

The examples above are my personal observations and interpretations, and they may hence be coloured or even partly incorrect. I think, however, that they give an impression of the size and the complexity of the problems that the Ethiopian people are struggling with. In case there is an interest, I could try and write down a few more observations during the next days.

One more impression: as one may see from the pictures that I have uploaded, a lot of work in Ethiopia is done by women, even heavy work which is rarely or never seen to be done by women in Europe. Several times I have seen couples walking on the road, where the woman was carrying all the heavy stuff and the man was walking besides her carrying … nothing! Alcoholism is also a problem in Ethiopia, especially among the men. Many of them apparently spend their days just with drinking beer. Without wanting to generalise in any way is my impression that removing half of all the men in Ethiopia would not cause any noticeable difference. Removing half of all the women, however, would cause the country to break down completely. Women are also the driving force behind most of the microprojects and microcredits. One of the women in Daga Chengie expressed this very strikingly when asked about the role of the men: "They are totally useless. They would be completely lost without us."