Introduction
My trips to Ethiopia included a
sort two-week visit in June of 2004, a longer six-week stay from December of
2004 to February of 2005 and finally a 13-month visit that began in June of
2005 and ended in July of 2006. During
all these visits while working as a volunteer for a prominent Utah Humanitarian
Alliance my goal was to do humanitarian work that covered such activities as
training villagers on simple technologies that would save their lives or help
to make them healthier, on working with local humanitarian workers, teaching
them skills they would transfer to villagers and generally being there to be
called upon when needed on a multitude of tasks that would assist the local
people in solving simple technology problems,
fixing things they couldn’t fix themselves, inventing ways to draw upon local
scarce resources to create those simple technologies that were so badly needed.
While there I marveled at many of
the things I saw and relished in sharing them with my foreign colleagues
(“Forenzies” as we were all called by the locals) who came to the country
either as volunteers for humanitarian work or interns that were building a
skill-base of their own using this Ethiopian environment as their training camp.
In my spare time I went on to record many those things I saw and did. Some were funny, most were sad, but all were
interesting. The framework in which I existed allowed me a little time to play,
to think about things I saw and wanted to do and to reflect upon what I saw to
compare it with all the other experiences I had enjoyed throughout my life. I
had time to tell stories, to make up stories and to comment on other stories
and situations. Much of what I will recorded is a reflection of this experience
and how I made it work for myself for all those long weeks and months I stayed
in that country. Most, of course will be true, but I admit that some of the
things included here will be fractured truths or simply things I made up. I
will make no conclusions or judgments about my stories and only hope the discerning
reader will decide on his or her own the value or efficacy in what they read.
SELLING WOOD AT THE MARKET PLACE
While I was making my way out to the
remote village of Shala Bilaa in the northwestern sector of the Arsi Negelle
District one day to work on a roofwater harvesting and storage project, I came
across a woman and three children making their way along a primitive track on
which I was traveling driving two donkeys laden with large bundles of cut
wood. Each donkey had what I would
estimate was near 100 pounds of wood hacked from acacia trees tied to their
backs. The woman was carrying a child on
her back held there by a ragged shawl. She was also carrying a purse of sorts
and a small empty water bottle. Her other two children were walking behind
her. Each carried their own water
bottles–their bottles were also empty.
I was curious where this woman was
going, and so when we neared the woman I asked the driver to stop the car and
told Kidane, my colleague an Engage Now Foundation, Ethiopia Program
Coordinator, to interpret for me while I asked the woman some questions. The
woman was young, I would guess about eighteen. In a dirty and dusty way like
most of the Ethiopian women, she was beautiful, adorned with simple jewelry, even
in her ragged clothing.
Typical Way of Transporting Wood to Market
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I wanted to know where she was
going with the wood and what she planned to do with it. After asking the woman
through the interpreter, he told me she was going to market and would sell the
wood there using the money she received to purchase some goods from the market
she needed in her home. She had cut the wood herself that week, and since that
day was Tuesday, would be selling it in the Wood Market the next day—Wednesday
Market Day in Arsi Negelle Village. I
knew from a previous reading I had taken with my GPS unit nearby where we were
that as the crow flies, this walk for the woman and her children would be about
35 km (almost 22 miles). I asked her through Kidane how long it would take her
to walk that far. She said she would be walking all day and part of the night,
but would arrive the next day in time to sell her wood at the Wood Market.
I wondered also about the woman’s
need for water since it was obvious she had none with her, and was told that
she would gather water from the hot springs some 10 km (about six miles) from
where she was at that moment. She would pass by these springs on the way, and I
was certain knowing the terrain from there to Arsi Negelle Village that this
would be the last source of water for her and her children before she arrived
at her destination. At the rate this woman and her children could walk, I
guessed it would be at three hours before she arrived at the springs and
several hours later when the water would be cool enough to drink from their two
liter bottles.
I had visited these springs on one
of my earlier trips to Ethiopia, and knew the water coming out of them, while
potable, was entirely too hot to drink. I had been told by villagers at Shala
Bilaa that used this spring water, that when they filled their jerry cans to
take them to their homes it took many hours before they could drink it. This
hot spring was the closest viable source of water for the entire village of
Shala Bilaa. The only other source of water for this village was located at
Lake Langano a freshwater lake some 18 km (11 miles from this same spring).
Whichever source the village used, some family members of the five thousand
residence of this village fetched water for their homes and drove their animals
to this source every other day except during the rainy season when some water
could be collected from roofs of their homes (if they had tin roofs) or in
puddles cut into the dry earth for collecting ground water. The other
remarkable thing about this water-fetching process, I learned, was that only
women and children were responsible for fetching water for the household and
watering their animals and at this village, unlike some of the others in the
District, no one had donkey-driven carts and only a few of them like this young
woman had an animal that could carry the water for them. Even more extraordinary
was the fact that three of the other villages adjoining Shala Bilaa in this
remote and very dry region were surrounded by huge bodies of water--two large
lakes (Lake Shala and Lake Habijata), both of which were dead lakes with no
outlet causing them both to be so saline that the water was not suitable for
human or animal use.
Knowing that I was certain that this
woman would gather the water for her children, filling their bottles, but it
would be possibly hours later before they could even drink it. This water
source I knew was the only water source for her and her children from there to
the marketplace, so those two liter bottles they were carrying would have to
hold them through the day and night before they arrived at Arsi Negelle village.
I continued to ask the woman
questions and learned that the wood she had with her would be sold for 10
Ethiopian Birr for each donkey load. This amounted to the equivalent in U.S.
dollars to about $2.30. Since she would be walking most of the day and part of
the night to get to Arsi Negelle, she would have to stay over night with her
animals and children along the way and on returning would have a second night
to sleep in the open. I noted that she carried no blankets for herself or her
ragged children and only had the one small shawl that she used for the baby she
carried on her back. The nights were cold in that desert region of Ethiopia and
I wondered how she would survive the two nights with hyenas rampant in the
region. I just assumed she with her children would snuggle amongst her animals
and take her chances.
Other Manners of Carrying Wood to Market
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I would see this same scenario
played out from all parts of the Arsi Negelle District during my stay there.
Every Wednesday was Wood Market day for villages served by the central village,
Arsi Negelle of that same named District. The Big General Market day was
Friday, and the Small Market Day was Monday. Thousands of people visited those
markets, most walking or driving their donkey carts loaded with goods to barter
or sell. All the regional villagers (about twenty four in all with about sixty
thousand residents, I was soon to learn, considered going to Market as a
necessary activity that not only fulfilled their material needs, but also
served as a day of socialization, a place where the men congregated to talk and
chew khat (leaves from a hallucinatory drug that was commonly consumed by most
men in the Region), and a location for young adults to meet their friends. For
some–especially teenage girls and boys, it was a time to do the things they
were not allowed to do in their village homes or environment. The regional
villagers live for Market Days, and only survive because of them. Market Day is
a social phenomenon in the agricultural and pastoral regions of the country and
is something that no matter what the physical cost to people is observed with a
passion.
Whoever said you couldn’t cross a
cow with a camel? In Ethiopia
Finally after many months of
wondering about these goats that stood so gallantly on top trucks, busses and
large trailers, I learned from a man who knew something about these goats. As I
suspected they indeed served an important purpose. “These are Signal Goats,”
the old man told me through an interpreter. “Signal Goats,” I said, “I don’t
really understand.” “These are specially trained goats, you know” the old man
continued. “If you look closely, you will note that they are all the same size
and type of goat, and though they may not be the same color, they are the same
breed.”
That
would all change when the Community Workers came to Ellsabet’s home in February
of 2005 with adobe bricks, a piece of stove pipe, three used food cans and a
bag of cement to build her new stove. A week later Ellsabet began using her
stove and from that moment on, her life would never be the same. She would have
more time that she could devote to her family and other chores, the family’s
cost for fuel purchased during the rainy season would be reduced by nearly 70%,
along with a greatly reduced time she would have to spend gathering wood during
the dry season. In addition her health would be improved, the safety of her
small children would no longer be an issue, she wouldn’t be having eye and
respiratory problems from the smoke, and the constant skin burns she suffered
from the open flame would be eliminated.
During
an interview we had with Ellsabet one year after her stove was in service she
told us that there were several things that impacted her life greatly after she
began using her stove. She said that before she had her new stove, she spent a
good part of everyday cooking over her open fire since the fire constantly had
to be tended because even heat could never be maintained without continuous care.
Now she says, she could begin cooking her meals, and at the same time be
washing her clothes, taking care of her children or working with her animals. She
claimed cooking with a smokeless stove has made to her to be able to breath
without inhaling all that smoke and rubbing her eyes all the time. She said her
life was now easier and she could devote time to her children, helping them
with their chores, teaching them their household duties, reviewing their school
work and keeping them clean. She had more energy, than before; when she constantly
had to work with the fire and her meals, she had no energy for anything else in
her life, and many things she needed to do went undone.
We
asked this shy twenty-eight year old woman what she would do if she had the
opportunity to build another stove for her family. First she said she loved her
stove and wouldn’t change anything about it, but when she thought about it some
more, she said that first she would have two large injera pans and would use
one for cooking injera and the other for flatbread, another staple of these
indigenous Ethiopian villagers. She said she had found that she was able to
cook wonderful bread on her injera pan, but if she had another pan space like
the one she has now, she would cook bread and sell it. Next she would like
another place for a smaller pot, and then she could heat water for tea without
having to use charcoal like she did with a small charcoal burner. On the side
of her new stove, she would have a place to put finished injera; that is, an
extension of the stove surface area for storing the injera or other items.
In the village of Keraru we constructed a twelve thousand two hundred liter (3220 gallon) partial underground storage tank that stores water harvested from a nearby building roof. This unit was conceived to provide water for most of the north end of the village. Any villagers that were willing to walk to this water supply were able to retrieve ten gallons of water at any taking. Community Workers were designated as managers of the distribution of the water. If people were willing to pay for the water and the going market rate, they were allowed to retrieve more of the water when it was available. About three hundred families signed up to have access to this water. During the dry seasons (about nine months of the year) if the tank was emptied, villagers must revert to their normal water sources (three polluted rivers that run through the village).
A
rather new technology, acrylic concrete, was used in the plastering and waterproofing
of the cisterns. I had used this technique successfully on a small scale on two
other Engage Now Foundation, Ethiopia projects, but never on such a large scale
as this. Just to plaster the inside of the three cisterns using this material,
over three cubic meters of acrylic concrete was used. This technology, made
from a mixture of fine sand, cement and acrylic sludge increases the bonding
ability of the render while making the application virtually waterproof for
continued years of service.
COWMELS
 
Ethiopian Camels and Cowmels Crossed with Camels
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I ran across this strange
phenomenon in all parts of Central Ethiopia where I traveled and worked. The Ethiopians, because of the strange
climate conditions and the frequent droughts have had to adopt many things that
in other countries just wouldn’t be feasible.
One striking example is how they have taken a regular Brahman cow like
the one shown in the photo above and bred it to adapt to the drier, desert-like
climate of Central and Southern Ethiopia. These cows, like camels, have a large
hump on their front shoulders that serves to store water and allows them to go
days without replenishing their drinking water.
This special condition of these
Cowmels was only possible because of a not too well known fact that camels are
found in many parts of Ethiopia. They are held and herded by a group of nomadic
Ethiopians who travel about the country with these large herds of camels,
selling them whenever and wherever they can find a buyer. These animal, like
all camels, are well adapted to dry desert climates that is common to many
parts of Central Ethiopia and as is known everywhere, the hump on their backs
is testimony of the water they can store in their bodies to keep them in needed
body liquid during dry spells and when no other water is available.
At some point years ago a group of
foreign animal husbandry scientists were called in by the Ethiopian Government
to find a breed of cattle that could survive in the dryer parts of Ethiopia and
thus supply needed meat for those villagers that was sustainable. While they
studied the conditions upon which cattle had to survive in these dry areas, one
of the scientists asked the question one day, “Why couldn’t we take ordinary
cows, cross them with camels and produce a breed of cattle that is just as
tolerant of the dry climates as camels?”
Years of research went into this process, I leaned, before a breed of
cattle was successfully created, that is now known all over Ethiopia
SIGNAL GOATS
During the many trips I took from
Arsi Negelle in the central region of Ethiopia to the capital city, Addis
Ababa, I frequently saw goats that were either tethered to the loads on the tops
of trucks, busses and trailers or just standing with their feet widely apart on
the top of loads of these vehicles. These hardy animals seeming to be great
balancers as the trucks or buses cruised along the highways traveling in both
directions always seemed attentive to the road ahead be facing forward in every
case. For a long time I wondered what this meant. It was surely a strange place
for goats to be, and especially those which were not tethered to the load on
the truck or bus. I noticed also that they always seemed to be very alert as
they stood balanced on the top of the vehicle bed. Even those that were tethered seemed to have
that same attentiveness.
While I kept seeing this strange
sight I imagined various scenarios as to what purpose these goats served. I had
learned from my acquaintance with villagers who raised goats and had goat herds
what they did with them (most goats in the Central Region of Ethiopia are
raised for their meat, not milk), but
nothing made sense about those goats that were placed on top of the loads of
these trucks and busses. Villagers sold their goats and many were eaten throughout
the country, and eventually I learned they were very valuable–especially during
and before special holidays such as Christmas and Easter and other traditional
Muslim holidays. During these holidays some
goats, I was told, sold for as much as 300 Birr, the equivalent of about 35 U.S
Dollars, and large amounts for fat, mature goats.
Since this was such a curiosity to
me and other Forenzies like me, I asked around with bus and truck drivers and
local villagers what purpose these goats on top of trucks and busses
served. Initially no one I spoke to seemed
to know, and unfortunately, I was never able to talk to anyone who actually had
one of these creatures on the top of their loads whom I could ask about the goat’s
purpose. It was obvious when I saw goats tethered on top of mini-busses (the
small local taxies that were everywhere), that these were animals that belonged
to someone in the minibus who was taking it to sell in market or simply taking
it to a party for food. That all made sense since these goats were bound
tightly by the feet and tied securely on top of the mini-busses. These goats
unlike those that I saw on the larger trucks and busses were not attentive to
the road and were obviously in sedated states since they were bound tightly
with ropes. These goats were on their way to be eaten.
Signal Goats in Training.
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Through a long discussion that took
me many places in this old sage’s life I learned that he had been a Goat Trainer
when he was younger, and that he was one of the people responsible for creating
this valuable helper to truck and bus drivers. He told me that signal goats, by
virtue of their special breed and training make a blatting sound, much like all
other goats, but theirs is louder and can be heard above all other road noises.
This blat, he told me, was used as a warning of impending danger to drivers that
had these keen-eyed animals on top of their loads, and that any time the goat
saw something down the road it would “signal” the driver of this looming danger
by belching out this loud blat. All cross-country truck drivers knew of these
special goats; and they were highly sought after for this special capability.
I asked the man how they managed to
stay on top of the trucks without falling off while the truck was moving and
especially if it came to a sudden stop. “Simple,” the man said. “These goats come
from a long-known breed of mountain goats that were used to walking on narrow
cliffs and clinging to precarious precipices–especially during hard driving
winds and foul weather. They were also known
to have this capability that they can jump many meters and land on their feet
without hurting themselves. So those that are not tethered to the load, in a
time when the truck may come to a sudden stop or be involved in an accident,
can jump to the ground without being hurt.”
While I continued to travel throughout
the country seeing these goats on top of large vehicles, this further confirmed
my thoughts that this was a very special country, and that some of the things
that I learned, though they may be quite outlandish, like the phenomenon of Signal
Goats, must be true.
LEGACY OF A SMOKELESS STOVE
February, 2006
In January of 2005 in the village
of Rafu Hargisa in central Ethiopia, the household of the Gemacho family was
selected by Community Workers (the men and women from each village that my
humanitarian company chose to implement the programs we introduced to the
villages under our care) for the installation of a smokeless stove in their
family home. This would be just one of several stoves already operating in Rafu
Hargisa that we as a humanitarian project had introduced to this area. The
purpose of these stoves was to replace the open fire pits that were common inside
most thatch-roofed homes in the region. These fire pits with their smoke, hot
rocks and poor efficiency caused many health problems for mothers that used
them for cooking all their meals. The fire pits were especially dangerous for
small children who often got burned on the hot rocks and flaming embers. The
simple technology stoves that we introduced to the villagers were of a simple
rock or adobe brick construction about waist high with a place in the top for
the injera pan used to cook their injera pancake and a smaller opening for pots
of various sizes. Each stove was supplied with a stovepipe that vented the
fumes and smoke to the out of doors. Any combustible material could be used on
these stoves, but were usually fired with branches cut from the acacia trees
and bushes in the region. Other material like corn stocks, cow dung and grass
clippings were also used in place of the more rare and expensive wood.
Materials for the stoves were cheap and they were easy to build. They had
proved to solve many health, and environmental problems and were also shown to
be seventy percent more efficient than burning fuels in an open fire pit.
The “kitchen” of the Gemacho family
where this stove was to be located was in a separate building from the family
hut. This was a mud and wattle facility with a thatch roof like her home. Half
of the partitioned kitchen served as a shed for various animals. Ellsabet
Gemacho, the mother of the family had been using her kitchen for over ten
years, cooking meals for her immediate and extended family, now numbering nine
adults and children. Her old “stove”
consisted of fire pit made from three stones placed near the one corner of this
eight foot by eight foot room, where she built an open fire several times a day
to cook her injera, the staple food of most Ethiopians in this area made from
teff flour and other grain flours. Ellsabet used the same fire pit for cooking
other food items including potatoes, cabbage, carrots, occasional meat dishes
and various other vegetable dishes to go with the injera. Among other things,
using this old fire pit was always an issue for Ellsabet since the ceramic
injera pans (which look similar to Western pizza pans) were easily broken. Heat
and smoke was a problem and with small children there was always the chance
that one of them would get burned.
Ellsabet’s Kitchen (Thatch-covered
Structure to Left), Her Smokeless Stove and Her Family
During
that first year Ellsabet used her new smokeless stove she found that the
convenience of being able to use many different types of fuels had been
wonderful. Even though she preferred to use wood in her new stove, any fuel
like corn stocks, straw or dried cow dung were used with almost the same
efficiency. Ellsabet found that soon after her stove was in operation her
neighbors were coming over to see how her stove worked, always envious of its
efficiency and the safety it provided for her small children. Soon some of the
neighbors were there with their injera batter asking if they could use her
stove after she was through, knowing that the stove, once hot would remain that
way for many hours. For some time, Ellsabet reported, her neighbors came often
to use her stove or learn of its benefits.
Soon those same women were insisting that they have their own stoves,
and within a year many of them did so. In a year and one half after the first
stove was built in Rafu Hargisa, over twenty six new stoves had been built
there, either constructed by the Community Workers with Engage Now Foundation
Ethiopia support, or built by the homeowners themselves. The cost for Engage
Now Foundation Community Workers to build one of these stoves was estimated at
approximately US $59.00 each if all of the materials were purchased. People who
choose to build one themselves were able to do so for just over US $10.00 out
of pocket (the approximate cost of a bag of cement and a stove pipe).
Ellsabet’s
story is a common one we heard often from mothers whose lives were changed because
of their stoves. With over two hundred and ten stoves in the villages by
mid-2006 initiated by Engage Now Foundation Ethiopian we determined that they served,
over four thousand three hundred people. Both children and adults were been
positively benefited by these wonderful, efficient, simple technology smokeless
stoves. Many different materials were employed in the construction of the
stoves as the Community Workers and homeowners continued to improve on the
designs. Stoves built of rock, some with
simple adobe mud, but most often they are built with adobe bricks and plastered
over for the finishing touch that the women preferred. Some women decorated
their stoves with fancy lettering or colorful patterns; many were modified--designs
that suit particular needs of the mothers by adding storage space under the
stoves or extending the space on top for storage or placement of their cooked
food.
A
few problems were encountered in the early days of stove building in the Arsi Negelle
District. The first smokeless stove to
be built in the area was laboriously constructed of stones and concrete, taking
four days to build. Community Workers who continued to assist villagers
building these stoves made many improvements and modifications which after were
regularly built in half a day. The first smokeless stove was built in Rafu
Hargisa during the June 2004 Expedition by Community Workers, directed by Chris
Gay and myself. In a later visit I made to the home where this first stove was
built, I found it was temporarily out of service. I was told that the stove used
too much fuel, a problem that a simple modification quickly mitigated. A plan was
already underway to fix the problem with this first-of-the-lot stove and get it
operating properly. But nonetheless, this stove was a model that was adopted by
many others--neighbors of this homeowner as well as people from villages nearby
and far away. Improvements were soon made and within a few months, most all the
newer stoves built in the community were operating efficiently. The two hundred
and ten stoves built by Engage Now Foundation Community Workers were spread
over twenty villages in the Arsi Negelle District. This did not include the
many stoves that have were built by homeowners themselves. While no data were
available after mid-2006 it is safe to say that this was an idea that caught on
and was one that was truly sustainable. It was an idea that took root and had
by then becoming a legacy.
WATER FETCHING FOR DOMESTIC USE IN ETHIOPIA
Fetching
of water by hand from streams, lakes, wells, ground-water puddles and springs
is normal all over the rural areas of Ethiopia. It is the essential thread of
life for people while they attempt to survive in the remote poor villages. It is not uncommon in many dry parts of the
country that people have to walk and lead their animals to water over distances
that exceed eighteen to twenty kilometers (11 to 12 miles) one way. Sadly the
people who do this, for the most part, are the women and children whose job it
is by tradition to do this work. Many people who fetch their water and lead
their animals to water find themselves spending several days of the week at
this arduous task, often walking great distances without shoes or with cheap
Chinese plastic shoes that can only make the task more unbearable.
Boy Collecting Water and Watering His Animals in Kumudo
Village
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There’s
a quotation that aptly describes the situation most Ethiopian villages face
that came from a Ugandan Humanitarian worker, “God must think we’re crazy. We
let the rain fall off our roofs onto our soil; it washes the soil away and
flows to the bottom of the hill. We then
climb down the hill and carry it back up to drink.” This is the sad commentary
of most Ethiopian women living in rural villages. Walking miles and many hours
for water day after day is a way of life, and a terrible burden on their lives.
It
was part of my goal while doing humanitarian work in Ethiopia to find ways of
mitigation the situation that most villagers face with simple technologies that
would provide water for them during dry seasons and also build sustainable and
simple models that could be replicated by the villagers when our work was done
and we no longer were there to orchestrate these small projects. What follows
are a few of the ways we did that and the results that occurred from their
operation:
A
5000 Liter Underground Tarpaulin-Lined Storage Tank in Gale Adele Village
In
one household in the village of Gale Adele in the Arsi Negelle Region of
Ethiopia, we set about to make a difference for several women whose lives were
burdened by spending the majority of their time fetching water for their
families and taking their animals to the sources of water. Gale Adele is a
village area of about nine square miles located in the northern part of the
Arsi Negelle District of Central Ethiopia. About four thousand people live in
this village. In the northern section of the area, potable water is only
available from Lake Langano, an average of eight kilometers (5 miles) one way
from their homes, or about the same distance to a hot spring on Lake Shala
whose water while potable, is too hot to drink without hours of cooling. The
water from this spring is a poor and secondary choice for these people because
they know, aside from it being almost boiling when it comes from the spring
source, it is also highly contaminated with Fluoride salts that eventually
color people teeth yellow and cause many other long-range medical problems for
them. Their only other choice for water
occurs during the three-month rainy season when rainwater fills depressions and
hand-made catchment basins from which they can draw their water. These water
sources are highly polluted by animal feces and contain all sorts of biological
germs like Vibrio cholera
bacteria
and Giardia and many other dangerous bacteria.
To
attempt to bring about a change for some of the people of the northern section
of Gale Adele regarding this serious water shortage, we chose a home that was
constructed of mud and waddle, but had a corrugated iron roof that we
calculated would produce enough water during rains showers to support the needs
of several local families. We believed that if we could harvest this water in a
great enough volume and store it safely, it could mitigate at least the need to
fetch water from the mentioned sources for domestic use. We knew their animals
would still have to be led to the water sources. We spoke to the family members
about the option of putting a roofwater collection system on their home and
told them that if they cooperated with supplying some of the materials and
manpower to install the system and were willing to participate in a sharing
program with their neighbors, we would construction this system and if
successful, would serve as a model for others we or they might build in the
future. The family agreed with the plan, and work soon after started.
Initially
the family along with U.S humanitarian volunteers that were in the area for a
week-long expedition dug a hole two meters square and two meters deep in the
hard ground next to the family home. When this hole was lined with suitable
material it would suffice to hole over five thousand liters of water (about
1320 gallons) when it was full. The hole was then lined with a large tarpaulin
and to give the water protection from sun, dust, insects and rodents, an
enclosure was built above ground and a corrugated roof was installed to seal
the structure. A simple technology PVC hand pump installed the front of the
enclosure would all the family to draw water as needed from the interior of the
underground tank. Gutters were installed on both sides of the roof of the home
and down spout pipes would feed water into the tank. When the project was
completed after about two weeks of heavy work we only then had to pray for
rain.
+003.jpg)
Tarpaulin-Lined Underground Tank
with PVC Pump
|
In
April, some rain came to the area and the system filled to capacity in just two
short rain storms. The tank was ready
for testing, and when we conducted the first test, the PVC hand pump that we had
constructed worked like a charm, and water flowed out at a rate of over twenty
five gallons a minute. People from miles around walked to see the tank and pump
in action and all commented that the water tasted like no other water they had
ever experience.
I
was curious about the continued operation of the tank and roofwater catchment
system since we had heard there were some problems with the basic design, so I
went to the site with tools to correct any problem we might find. Sure enough,
the gutter we had installed was poorly designed and a few corrections had to be
made. I made those corrections, and was about to leave when a neighbor of the
homeowner, Mrs. Badaso, came to me with her arms out wanting to take me into her
arms. I acknowledged her and with the interpreter who was with me listened to
what she had to say:
Her
story was tragic but common. While she clung to me in a deep embrace with tears
flowing down her face, she said to me that for the most part of her life, she
had been walking to Lake Langano (about five miles one way) two times a week
fetching water, which she hauled on her donkey. She had also led her few cattle
and goats to water on these trips to the lake. She said that since the tank was
installed and her neighbor had been so good as to allow her to draw domestic
water from her underground tank, her life had changed. She said she no longer
had to make that trip to the lake, and had her children take the animals. She
now was feeling physically better, not having to walk so far each week, had
time to talk to her neighbors, had more time to prepare meals for her family,
and now could look to participating more in the Women’s Committees (Mother’s
Group we organized for training women in the villages of simple technologies
and health) that had newly been formed in the community. She said she would be
forever grateful to me for what we installed for the families of that region
and would always remember us as the people who changed her life forever. This
was a story we fortunately were able to repeat in several other places,
affecting the lives of several hundred people in one village and several
thousand in another. Several other examples follow:
A
12,200 Liter Partial Underground Storage Tank and a Well Pump in Keraru Village
In the village of Keraru we constructed a twelve thousand two hundred liter (3220 gallon) partial underground storage tank that stores water harvested from a nearby building roof. This unit was conceived to provide water for most of the north end of the village. Any villagers that were willing to walk to this water supply were able to retrieve ten gallons of water at any taking. Community Workers were designated as managers of the distribution of the water. If people were willing to pay for the water and the going market rate, they were allowed to retrieve more of the water when it was available. About three hundred families signed up to have access to this water. During the dry seasons (about nine months of the year) if the tank was emptied, villagers must revert to their normal water sources (three polluted rivers that run through the village).
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Completed Tank with Above Ground Portion
Showing and PVC Pump Being Used to Draw Water
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This
project started with the community workers digging a circular hole in the
ground that was six and one half feet wide and over ten feet deep. At ground level we installed a concrete ring
beam around the hole and then built up a wall of bricks over three-feet high
making the overall depth of the tank over thirteen feet deep. Inside we lined
the tank with a thin layer of waterproof cement (acrylic concrete) reinforced
with chicken wire. For the top we constructed a Ferro cement cover that was
built away from the tank and hauled by hand where it was installed and sealed
to the top of the tank. On the roof of a community building next to the tank,
we installed gutters and a down spout that feeds the tank when the rains come.
Water is retrieved from the tank by means of a PVC hand pump that is capable of
lifting water up from the bottom of the tank at a rate of ten gallons a minute.
This
project took three months to complete and was done during the dry season. The
village was so thrilled with the tank completion that they organized a party to
celebrate this project and another we completed at the same time as this one
(see Rope and Washer Pump story below). It had not rained in this village for
over ninety days and it was expected that it would not rain for another thirty
or more days (at the beginning of the normal rainy season), so at that time the
tank was completed we had no sense of whether the tank would hold water, if the
roof would generate enough water to fill the tank adequately, or if the pump
would lift the water from so deep a hole.
With
the tank still empty the celebration plans went ahead, however, and all the
villagers were invited along with government dignitaries from the region. The
District Manager, the highest ranking luminary from the region was also able to
come to the celebration. Like a miracle, on the day before the planned
ceremonies, a pre-rainy season heavy rain went through the area passing over
this village. The rain showers lasted about four hours during the early
morning, but in that four hours, the tank was filled to over capacity. On the
day of the celebration when the veil was lifted from the tank top, the District
Manager stepped up to the pump, began lifting the handle, and in a few seconds
water was pouring out of the spout. This tank has proved itself over and over
again as normal rains continued to fill it and villagers came around to enjoy
this precious clean water.
A
Rope and Washer Pump
In
this same village where an underground aquifer was relatively near the surface
(about thirty feet below ground level) several villagers had dug open wells and
were harvesting water year around from these wells. Their method of drawing
water from the wells, however, was archaic at best where a rope was tied to
half of a rubber auto inner tube that would hold about two gallons of water at
a time. The process was unreliable since a good part of the water was lost at
each bailing and the water always tasted of rubber. When I learned about these
wells I saw an opportunity to modify one family’s existing well with a simple
technology rope and washer pump. On this particular farm the landowner had
already allotted a portion of his land to the community for a community garden
that was one program we as a humanitarian organization was promoting throughout
the Region. At the time this arrangement was made with the community, no plans
had been finalized for irrigation of the community garden. It was assumed that
the plot would be irrigated by people gathering water in sprinkler buckets from
a nearby river. On other community gardens that we had already established,
this was the on-going method of irrigation.
This
pump I envisioned, if it was built to produce a high capacity of water might
serve as an alternate and more efficient manner of irrigation of the new
community garden, provide enough water for the irrigation of the landowner’s
plot and also provide clean potable water for his family. About three hectares
(a little over four acres) of land was the space that needed irrigation, which
included the landowner’s plot and the community garden area. It was intended
that produce from the community garden would serve the community’s needs and
some would be left over for sale on the open market.
This
existing well was on the upper end of the landowner’s property making it ideal
for flood irrigation by ditches from the well to the two garden plots. At the
time we worked out the construction plan of the pump the landowner who had
initially dug the well-used it primarily for his family and extended family that
lived nearby and irrigation of a small family garden. The rest of the acreage
had laid fallow for many years because of the lack of a practical means of
irrigating it. To make this a viable
project, we contacted the owner of the well and asked if he would be willing to
share the water for the community garden.
He agreed and volunteered to assist in the construction of the pump and
modification of the well itself.
The
old well was in a depression that make it hard to work with in its present state,
so we constructed a brick wall around the well opening, raising it about 3 feet
up to the normal ground level around the well.
And then we backfilled against the brick well extension until the ground
was level and smooth around the entire well opening. With posts we concreted in
next to the well on both sides we installed a heavy wood frame that included a
large wheel and double crank. A pipe for
lifting the water was installed in the well and a continuous loop feed rope was
put in the pipe. By cranking the wheel,
the rope with rubber washers that fit the diameter of the pipe that we
installed about every two feet along the entire loop of the rope, made it so
that when the rope was fed into the pipe and ran around a small loop on the
bottom of the pipe and back to the large wheel that was installed on the crank
shaft we could lift water from about 36 feet up through the two inch diameter
pipe to the surface. When we tested the operation of the pump with two men
cranking the shaft on each side of the well where we had installed crank
handles, the water we lifted by this device exceeded 50 gallons a minute. This
we determined was enough when continuous pumping was taking place for about one
half hour to completely irrigate the new community garden that had been planted
in anticipation of our completion of the rope and washer pump assembly.
Cutaway View of a Typical Rope and Washer Pump
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Eleven
families participated in this successful venture for two growing seasons
(through the dry season), then for reasons for which we had no control, conflicts
arose regarding the management of the community garden and the project was
halted and the landowner took back his land.
An
800 Liter and a 10,600 Liter Above Ground Water Tanks in Gale Adele Village
Two
other projects in the village of Gale Adele were completed just after we had
the underground five thousand liter storage tank in operation. One was an eight
hundred liter (over 200 gallon) Ferro cement tank that we built next to a
single mother’s hut that was situated with gutters along the side of her
corrugated roof home to harvest rain water from the roof. This unit served not
only this woman and her small family, but also was shared by about one dozen
families through the rainy season.
During the dry season the woman used the tank for her own needs only.
With her domestic needs for water only she was able to utilize water from the
tank for over 100 days. This woman had five small children, all under the age
of fourteen. Before installing the tank for her, she was required to walk to
Lake Langano, some eight miles from her home and take her children with her to
fetch water which they carried in jerry cans. She had a few goats that went on
these every-other day trips but did not have a donkey to assist her with
carrying water. After her tank was in service with the extra time she has to be
home, with the help of village Community Workers, she constructed a small
kitchen outside of her home using adobe bricks like those we were installing
throughout the Region. Prior to this when the weather allowed it, she had been
cooking all her meals over an open fire pit. Inside her concrete block house
she had another fire pit with no vent except up through the rafters of her
corrugated roof where she cooked her meals. This woman never hesitated whenever
we saw her to offer her thanks for the change that resulted in her life after
she had her tank and adobe stove. The next season after this woman’s stove and
water storage tank had been in operation and she realized she had a lot of time
on her hands with little more to do than take care of her children, we
initiated another program for her that further enhanced her life and economic
status. At the time we were working in the Region we had been bringing old
refurbished Singer Sewing Machines that had a crank handle in place of the
electric motors that were on them originally. On U.S. humanitarian volunteer
had modified several of these machines in his shop in the U.S. and we had
volunteers that were coming to Ethiopia bring them in their luggage. When we
learned about this woman’s demise with so much time on her hands and knowing
she was a very aggressive and hard-working woman, we gave her one of these
crank sewing machines, taught her how to use it, supplied her with a few
essentials like needles, thread and extra swatches of material and encouraged
her to begin a new small business of repairing clothing for her neighbors. She
immediately took the challenge and soon had waiting lists of women in her
village paying her to do their clothing repairs that they were before doing by
hand or not doing at all.
+001.jpg)
800 Liter Acrylic Jar for Water Storage
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Ten Thousand Six Hundred Liter Above Ground Storage
Tank (Under Construction)
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In
this same village, near the village elementary school house, we completed an
above ground, tent thousand liter (2640 gallon) acrylic concrete tank that
during school months served the daily needs of over thirteen hundred children’s
need for drinking water. The school
building was a fairly new structure that had a long corrugated metal roof that
produced a great deal of water during the rainy season. With long gutters we
installed on both sides of the building and two downspouts feeding into the
tank, during the rainy season the tank would easily be filled with only a few
hours of steady rain. When school was out during the summer vacation, villagers
were allowed to use the water. During
this period, this tank was able to serve the needs of twenty five families that
lived nearby the school for over fifty days. As mentioned before the closest
other source of potable water for this northern end of the village of Gale
Adele was five miles.
Rebuilding
Three Fifty Six Thousand Liter Cisterns in Shala Bilaa Village
Some
eighteen kilometers west of the main highway leading from Arsi Negelle to Addis
Ababa, there is a village by the name of Shala Bilaa that lies on a peninsula
between Lake Shala and Lake Habijata. This village and two others adjoining it
were among the driest villages in the Region in which we were doing
humanitarian services. The water in both these lakes is found to be too salty
to be used for human consumption. Because of the dry climate in this village
and low amount of precipitation even during the regular rainy season, few people
are able to have farms most depend solely for their livelihoods on revenue
generated from the sale of wood, cattle and goats. The nearest water from this
location is the hot springs mentioned previously near the east shores of Lake
Shala some ten kilometers from most of the family homes in this village. This
is a very remote village with the only market where goods can be sold or traded
is over thirty five kilometers away (about 22 miles one way) on short-cut
trails, or over forty eight kilometers by vehicle.
When this village became part of
the Engage Now Foundation Ethiopia
Several years later, another
American individual from another NGO came around offering to fix the problem
with the first tank, and complete the other two tanks. Reportedly money was an issue for this
individual so he asked for donations from the village and soon received over
50,000 Birr (over $5700) to do the work. Once the man had the money in hand,
however, he disappeared and was never seen again. No work was ever done after
to mitigate the cistern problems.
It was easy to see from my first observation
of the existing cisterns that with some consolidated effort between us and the
village, these three cisterns could all be put into operation in as little as
three months. These cisterns were intended to store approximately one hundred
and sixty eight thousand liters of potable water.
Ten years had passed since the
individual left with the community’s money and we arrived on the scene to
determine the feasibility of rebuilding the cisterns. During that ten years
only one organization, a government entity, had attempted to provide the
village with any sources of potable water. This government entity drilled a
well near the school and set up a pump for the village. However, the water from this new well turned
out to be saline and not usable. The pump was then removed and vandals later
plugged the well casing with stones. Since the community was not able to fund
the completion of the cisterns, and the new well was sour, the village
households were left with no other alternative than to continue hauling water
from other sources—the springs on the east shore of Lake Shala or from the
fresh water Lake Langano. Either alternative required individuals to pack water
over eight miles from the center of the village.
Knowing that this village was
continually suffering from lack of potable water, frequent draughts and dry-season
migrations of people left Shala Bilaa because of the lack of water, in
September of 2005 I examined the soundness of the existing cisterns and an
estimate was made to determine the cost of rebuilding them and installing
gutters on all the buildings to feed the cisterns. This study showed that the
project was feasible and cost effective, and moneys were allocated to Engage
Now Foundation Ethiopia (ENFE) by the sponsoring organization (Ascend) to fund
the refurbishment and repair of the cisterns if the community would support the
project with labor.
In a
meeting that was held involving ENFE, the school and village officials, they
all agreed with our proposal, but they were obviously cautious since on three
other occasions they had been swindled into believing they would have local
water to use for the school and the village. However, since we made it clear
that the village only had to supply us with manpower, not money, they went
along with us. They did have one stipulation: one of the cisterns would be
dedicated solely for the school, while the other two would serve the community.
This was a small issue that required that we install a pipeline that would
carry the village water out of the school property to the village boarder where
we would set up a kiosk for the village. When they were finished, the school
cistern would have capability of storing sixty thousand nine hundred and
seventy six liters of water while the two community cisterns will hold together
one hundred seven thousand three hundred and twenty liters. The total static
capacity of the system is estimated to be one hundred sixty eight thousand two
hundred ninety six liters.
By late October, 2005 material was
purchased and delivered to the site and work got underway to repair the three
cisterns. All the repair work would be done by Community Workers and other
volunteers from the community with me orchestrating the operation and managing
the logistics. The repair work consisted of removing an unusable top that had
been constructed on one of the cisterns, repairing and waterproofing all three
cisterns, covering the three cisterns with roofs, running pipe lines to two
water delivery kiosks and installing new gutters and down spouts to deliver the
roof water to the cisterns. On two of the cisterns large sections of the walls
that had been damaged by vandals or were missing and had to be replaced. One of
the cisterns required a significant amount of wall repair since it had never
been lined or plastered. This cistern had to be plastered inside and out. An
inside waterproof render and special sealant to keep out insects, birds and
reptiles was applied to all three cisterns.
To provide delivery points for the
community and the school, two kiosks were built and piping was run to each from
the cisterns with a spigot installed that could be locked for security. To
provide free access to community water, a one hundred thirty meter long pipeline
was run across the school property to a point just outside the school fence
where the village kiosk was located. The school cistern was connected to the
village’s cisterns by a siphon pipe so that any excess overflow from the school
cistern would flow into the two village cisterns.
Other work that would be required
included the installation of gutters and downspouts on four existing school
buildings, which were adjacent to the cisterns, requiring about one hundred and
thirty meters of gutter and at least fifty meters of downspouts. The fourth
school had been built by the government about four years prior to our beginning
the project. This school had good roofing material and represented the best
source for rainwater harvesting. The other older buildings had rusty roof made
from corrugated metal, but were in good enough shape that we could use on side
of each of the three old buildings for gutters. The gutter installation was
given to a subcontractor. The installation of the down spouts was done by the
Community Workers.
The community pledged twenty voluntary
laborers daily to assist in the rebuilding and refurbishing all of the three
cisterns. During the period while construction was progressing throughout
November, December, January and part of February, on average, nine Community
Workers (most from neighboring villages) assisted Engaged Now Foundation,
Ethiopia with the labor required to repair the cisterns. Volunteer labor from
the community (other than the dedicated Community Workers from Shala Bilaa) was
sporadic at best, but most of the time non-existent, with never more than one
or two villagers assisting the Community Workers on any given day after the
first three weeks of work.
The roof trusses for the cisterns,
made from eucalyptus polls and assembled by Community Workers, were later covered
with corrugated sheet metal. The sheet metal work (galvanized corrugated
roofing materials) was subcontracted to a local contractor. Throughout the
months of January, and early March 2006 the work of sealing and waterproofing
of the cisterns continued and the roofing for all three cisterns was completed.
No progress was made during February because of delays getting the gutters
manufactured. All of the repair work on the cisterns and the down spouts on the
gutter system was completed on March 16, 2006.
Throughout the construction period
water had to be hauled by truck to the site from Arsi Negelle village for
concrete, plaster work, gutter testing and drinking water for the workers.
Almost every day during the construction period, over two hundred liters of
water was required for the operation.
Several
skill areas were needed to realize this program’s successful completion.
However, none of the Community Workers that supplied the labor for concrete and
masonry work, plastering, carpentry work (roof trusses and louvered vents) or waterproofing
had any prior experience in these type trades and had to be trained. Their
willingness to learn and ability to manage and use proper equipment and tools
of the trade was remarkable. Me and the ENFE Facilitator who managed the
project saw to it that proper safety and skills were learned through on-the-job
training, and because of this a new skill set amongst these men now exists in
this otherwise pastoral/small-farm community.
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Two of the Three Finished Cisterns at Shala Bilaa
Village
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ETHIOPIAN RULES AND STANDARDS
Introduction
The following are rules and standards of operation in Ethiopia Ethiopia
Rules for Driving on the Road
1. The first Rule of
the Road in Ethiopia
2. All trucks and
busses, no matter which way they are going always break down just before they
get to the crest of the hill. In conjunction with that rule is the rule that
the truck or bus that is broken down not be removed to the side of the road,
but rather be left in the lane of the road where it broke down. This rule also
says that it is only necessary to put rocks, bushes or sticks around the disabled
vehicle to warn other drivers that it is broken and at some future date (it
could be days) the vehicle will be removed or repaired.
3. A second rule
closely associated with the above rule is that any sticks, stones or bushes
used to divert traffic away from disabled vehicles be left in place after the
vehicle has been removed from the road. This is done to show other drivers
exactly where to break down or otherwise become disabled in case they don’t
know or have never broken down on that hill or blind corner.
4. It is necessary
that all drivers of trucks and busses and most other commercial vehicles along
with normal automobile drivers pass other vehicles just as they approach a
blind corner or the crest of the hill or both. This rule applies especially to
drivers of large heavily-laden trucks and busses, which because of their heavy
loads do not have the power to complete the pass until they are over the hill
or around the blind corner.
5. At night, all
trucks and busses turn off their taillights. It is the rule that no truck or
bus have stoplights or taillights in the rear of the vehicle at any time.
6. It is the rule that
all Ethiopian drivers leave their lights off until at least one hour after
sunset—that is, until it is completely dark. It is okay during the last half
hour of that period to turn on park lights, but if by accident a driver turns
on his or her head lights before the designated time, it is the rule that other
drivers flash their lights at the driver to warn him or her that he or she has
turned on their lights too soon. This is done since it is believed by most
Ethiopian drivers that when the lights are on in a vehicle great stress is put
on the battery of the vehicle.
7. Similar to the rule
regarding turning lights on in the evening, is the rule that drivers turn their
lights off one hour before sunrise. It follows, therefore, that other divers
will remind you by flashing their lights at you if you fail to remember to turn
your lights off at that time of the morning.
8. It is the rule that
all Ethiopian pedestrians step into the line of traffic before they look. This
means that as they are crossing the road without looking they simply wait until
the diver honks his or her horn before they stop and step back out of the line
of traffic.
9. It is the rule
that all Ethiopian pedestrians either stand or walk in the lane of the road
closest to the center. Sidewalks are to be avoided at all cost.
10. It is the rule when
entering a village where these people standing, talking or walking along the
road, that a driver increase his or her speed at least ten kilometers per hour
in order to get through the mass of pedestrians, animals and other parked cars
as soon as possible.
11. It is the rule of
all taxi and mini-bus drivers that they wait until the front wheel of your car
has become even with the back wheel of their vehicle before they quickly pull
out into your lane of traffic.
12. All stray horses
are taught to stand on the white line in the middle of the road (it doesn’t
matter which way they face). If there is no white line, they will estimate the
middle of the road and stand there. It
is the rule that they must always stand in line parallel with the traffic, (not
crossways) in the road. In most cases, these horses that stand in the middle of
the road are retired from service or are otherwise not needed by their previous
owners. From some clergymen that I met is learned that these horses are called
“Holy Horses,” and that when they are put out of service as work horses of some
sort, that they are turned over to the clergy and that they are given certain
“blessings” because of their long service to their owners and the community. It
is not uncommon, for instance, to hear the statement, “Holy Horse!” used in the
same manner as we in the West might use the term, “Holy Cow!” when referring to
these sacred animals.
13. All stray donkeys
also stand in the middle of the road, but the rule for them is that they must
stand crossways in the road, and that their body be as close to the middle of
the road as possible. These poor animals have not been accounted the honor
retired horses.
14. For Ethiopian
drivers (this rule also applies to cart drivers and horse-drawn taxies) there
are no lanes on the road, so whatever lane they are in is the defined lane (by default)
at that particular moment.
15. It is the rule that
all large trucks traveling on the highway be at least fifty percent overloaded
beyond their rated capacity.
16. It is the rule that
all Federal Government checkpoints on Ethiopian main highways be camouflaged so
that they are impossible to see, especially at night.
17. It is a rule
amongst Ethiopian bus, minibus and converted Toyota pickup trucks that are used
as busses, that the last world record for the number of mattresses and/or jerry
cans that can be carried on top of these vehicles always be challenged on every
opportunity that arises from passengers—that is, that no matter what the number
of these items the driver is asked to carry, the passenger is never turned
down.
18. It is the rule that
there be little or no road signs either indicating what village or town a
driver is approaching or which road leads to which town at intersections.
Furthermore, it is deemed important that no roads in cities be marked with the
names of those roads. In the rare instances where road or town officials have
chosen to put road signs up, every name is misspelled.
19. It is to be assumed
that for any Ethiopian driver of a vehicle, donkey or horse cart or pedestrian,
that any time that person, animal or vehicle is on the highway, they/it is/are
the only one there, no matter what obvious evidence there may be to the
contrary. It is further to be assumed that since the person, animal or vehicle
is the only one on the road, they/it can be anywhere on the road at any time
and for any purpose.
Dealing With Government Entities
1. It is the rule
in Ethiopia that whenever one is dealing with a government agency that he or
she allows two days for any activity embarked upon, no matter if the activity
would normally be expected to last less than one hour.
2. If one calls
ahead of time to get the directions or address of the government office that is
planned to be visited, it is a rule that the enquirer be initially given the
wrong location or address. If the enquirer happens to be you, you will go to
that address believing you are at the correct address and will be told by the
guard at the gate that the office you are seeking is located on the third floor
of the building and that there is an elevator to take you there. You arrive at
the elevator only to find that the elevator is out of order and you must walk
to the third floor. When you get to the third floor Reception, you are told
that this is the wrong office and you must go to the other office across town. You
travel across town in heavy traffic and park your car; at the gate and learn
that this office is also located on the third floor of the building. You know
the elevator is broken since you have already asked the guard about this, so
you walk to the office on the third floor.
You started
this process early in the morning, but now that you have finally arrived at the
correct office of the person you are supposed to see, it is 11:30 A.M. and the
person has gone to lunch early today and will not be back until 2:00 P.M. You
then leave and have lunch yourself and return to the office at 2:00 P.M., show
your paperwork to the Receptionist, only to learn that it does not have the
proper stamp on it. You have your own personal stamp with you, luckily, and so
you borrow the stamp pad of the Receptionist, only to find out that her stamp
pad is out of ink (which, by the way, is another rule, that all Ethiopian stamp
pads are out of ink). She spits or blows hot air on her stamp pad in a failed
attempt to make it work and then she says she has a friend on the first floor that
has a stamp pad that does work and leaves with your paperwork and stamp to get the
proper stamp placed on it. One half hour later she returns with your paper
properly stamped, so you are finally ready to visit the person you came to see
early in the morning.
This person,
however, is still occupied with the person he was scheduled to see before you
came to the office, who, by the way encountered the same problems as you
finding the right office, so you must wait until he is through.
At 4:30 PM you are invited to go into the office of the official, but now you only have one half hour left in the day since the office will close promptly at 5:00 PM and the official you are supposed to see will be leaving tomorrow and will not return until next Tuesday. Pray now that you can finish your business in one half hour, otherwise you will have to return next Tuesday to finish (thus comes into play the rule that it is necessary to allow two days for any business transaction with a government entity).
At 4:30 PM you are invited to go into the office of the official, but now you only have one half hour left in the day since the office will close promptly at 5:00 PM and the official you are supposed to see will be leaving tomorrow and will not return until next Tuesday. Pray now that you can finish your business in one half hour, otherwise you will have to return next Tuesday to finish (thus comes into play the rule that it is necessary to allow two days for any business transaction with a government entity).
3. As duly noted
above, all government entities require that all paperwork be stamped with a
proper stamp and that it be signed by the person in charge. And since it is the
rule that all stamp pads are always out of ink (rule noted above) one must
allow double the time ordinarily required to finalize paperwork.
Training of Ethiopians
1. It is the rule in
Ethiopia Addis Ababa
The main headquarters of ENFE was located in Addis Ababa.
It was in a nice location that included six of the buildings with rooms serving
as office space and a large home in which the Director lived. This was rented
property and rents were high but reasonable for the operations. In June of 2006,
however, the Landlord suddenly decided that the rent would be doubled. This was
far and above what the Salt Lake Homeoffice could afford to pay, so the
decision was made that a new office location be found and the local ENFE staff
move.
When the ENFE Headquarters Staff moved into their first office
in 2004, all of the lights in all the
rooms consisted of single bulbs hanging from the middle of the rooms on a wire.
Since the local staff were all trained to see in the dark, this didn’t bother
them much. But for me as a frequent visitor to that office from the field
operations in Arsi Negelle, this was totally unacceptable. The rooms were
entirely too dark for me, so on one of my visits to the office in 2005 I
suggested we change out all the bulbs in the building with especial attention
being paid to the lights in the office rooms. This suggestion resulted in 100
watt bulbs being place in all the rooms, which even then were less than
adequate, but exceedingly better than before.
In late May of 2006, Nigatu, the Country Director for ENFE
was told by the landlord that in June the rents would be doubled. There was a
trend all over the city with prices of fuel, housing, rent, and many products
being raised, so it was assumed the landlord wanted to get on the bandwagon and
get some more rent out of this American-based NGO.
It was an impossible thing for Nigatu to just give in and
pay the extra rent since there was no budget allocated for those increases, so
during the last week of May, Nigatu found a suitable office and home for him,
his family and local staff and began moving out. The move was accomplished by the first week
of June beating the deadline the landlord had set as the last day ENF could
occupy the premises without paying the double rent.
This was a difficult time for Nigatu since the same day as
the closeout of the old office and inspection was to take place by the
landlord, the June Expedition from U.S. arrived. Nigatu was in a panic and was not able to
meet the thirty volunteers from America, but rather had to stay behind for the
final inspection of the premises.
Most everything passed the landlord’s inspection until he
noticed that in the office and other rooms in the buildings, the light bulbs
had been changed to higher wattage. On discovering this, the landlord insisted
on the threat that he would hold back the deposit, that all the light bulbs be
changed back to the original 40 watt rating. Nigatu was stuck then with taking
time that evening to find suitable size light bulbs and change them out. There were
at least 25 lights that had to be changed that night. As a result to the
consternation of all the U.S.
volunteers that arrived that night at the Addis airport, Nigatu was not there
to greet them and welcome them to Ethiopia
2. All waiters and
waitresses are trained that when dealing with “Forenzies” (foreigners), that
they always take the Frenzies’ order wrong the first time, or that they
purposely bring something different that is in no way related to what was
ordered. Here are a few of the normal substitutions that are served to Forenzies:
a)
The Forenzie orders
Spaghetti but gets sliced tomatoes with onions.
b)
He or she orders
vinegar and oil for the salad and the substitutes are oil along with a plate
full of sliced onions.
c)
A Forenzie orders a
cold Pepsi but always gets a warm Coke. There is no word in any Ethiopian
language that translates the word “cold,” so the rule in Basic Restaurant Host
or Hostess Training “to give it your best guess.”
3. Ethiopian waiters
and waitresses are trained that when spoken to in English, they stay focused on
the items offered that day on the menu no matter what questions they may be
asked. Here are a few examples:
Question: Where is
the toilet?
Answer: We are
only serving fish today. It’s a fasting day.
Question: Sorry, I
meant where is the toilet, you know, TOILET?
Answer: Along with
fish we are serving potatoes and other vegetables.
Question: Let me try something else. How far is it to Hawassa?
Answer: We do not have it at this time.
Here is another example:
Question: This item on the menu, Macaroni Abasconia, does
it have meat or is it just plain tomato sauce?
Answer: Yes.
Question: What I mean is, does this macaroni dish contain
meat?
Answer: This is a fasting day.
Question: Never mind. Can I have this one (pointing to the
Macaroni Abasconia).
Answer: Sorry, we are out of that item. Would you prefer
Fish Goulash?
4. In all Ethiopian
restaurants, there is a rule then when a patron asks for catsup that the waiter
or waitress brings catsup, but only one tablespoon at a time served in a small
two inch diameter saucer. If the patron asks the waiter to bring a bottle of
catsup instead, he will bring one willingly, but it only has one tablespoon of
catsup left in it. When that portion has been used and the patron asks for
another bottle, waiters and waitresses are trained to bring another bottle, but
it must only have one tablespoon of catsup in it.
5. It is a rule that
all Ethiopian children learn three English words before they learn any words in
their native tongue. These words are: “Give me money.” The next words they
learn are, “You, you, you” followed by the third set of English words, “Give me
pen,” which really means to the child in his or her early age, “give me money.” It is only when children are is school and
know what a pen is that they really understand the meaning of the words, “Give
me pen,” and know that they are asking you for a pen. There is no known interpretation
for the statement, “You, you, you.”
6. All Ethiopian
children (primarily boys) are trained at an early age to automatically chase
any and all cars that pass within chasing distance of them. This rule applies
to any car passing their village hut or location where they might be playing or
attending school. They are also taught that if there is any place that they can
hang on to the car that they are chasing, that they do so, no matter that there
be a huge dust storm rising behind the car or that it might be terribly
dangerous for them to do so.
7. From an early age
(meaning as early as a child can walk by themselves) Ethiopian children are
trained to play in the street.
Religion, Language and Customs
1. There are some
rules about purchasing of meat that apply to all Forenzies and Ethiopians
alike. That is, that the buyer must specify beforehand the type (not cuts) of
meat he or she wants, and there are two types sold in the marketplace (always
in different locations, to be sure): Christian meat and Muslim meat. Muslim
meat, for instance, cannot be sold to a Christian, and vice versa.
2. Translation of
some words from Ethiopian languages to English might be confusing, and one must
learn the rules about this in order to make purchases or get along comfortably.
For example, there is only one word that can be translated for chicken, and
that is the word “hen;” so if one is to distinguish between the sexes of
chickens, one must understand that the female chicken is called “wife hen” and
the male chicken is called “husband hen.”
3. There is a rule
that there be no translation of the words, “left,” “right” and “straight
ahead.” These words are substituted by
hand signals used most often when a Forenzie is driving a car and is being
given directions by an Ethiopian passenger (usually while sitting in the back
seat). The direction, “go left” is shown by the right or left hand of the
direction-giver positioned on the shoulder of the driver, mostly out of the
driver’s vision so that the hand is in a flat, but vertical position with the
thumb slightly facing up and the fingers pointing generally in the direction
being given. All directions, such as, “go left,” “go right” or “straight ahead”
are done the same way with the fingers of the hand pointing generally in that
direction. All directions are accompanied by the words; “this way” or “that
way,” which translated means turn left or right or go straight ahead. The most
confusing option in this manner of direction-giving by his or her Ethiopian
passenger is done when the Forenzie driver approaches a round-about and it is
meant that the driver go straight ahead, for example. The direction-giver’s
hand is first pointed in a generally right direction, meaning first go around
the round-about. Then, just as the Forenzie driver is about to take the road
leading to the right of the round-about, the command suddenly changes along
with the voice command, “no, no, this way,” while the direction-giver shifts
his or her hand pointing the hand to the left.
Instantly, the driver must adjust his right turn as he or she attempts
to go around the round-about to the left.
But then, just at the point when the left turn is about to be negotiated
at the round-about, the command changes again to “no, no, go this way” and the
fingers of the hand point in the direction of the road that is straight through
the round-about where it is meant that he or she should have gone in the first
place.
4. It is a rule that
all directions given by an Ethiopian passenger riding with a Forenzie are given
by a combination of hand signals and verbal commands (see above), and that the
first direction is always given wrong.
5. In Ethiopia there
is a definition for the term, “a split second:” A split second is defined as
the time it takes for a Forenzie to stop his or her car in a village or along
any road, and for a crowd of onlookers to appear.
6. Time has no
definition in the Ethiopian ways or customs. A promise given to a person that
he or she will be a certain place at a certain time, for instance, really means
that they will be there “sometime” and that it is expected that the other person
will patiently wait for them to come, however long it takes.
7. All Ethiopian
children are taught at an early age to be acutely aware of any cars passing
through their play area, and that all passing cars be chased. This is
especially true in rural villages where children have more room to run and are
always able to see and hear any cars coming from a long distance away. In
crowded villages or rural towns, it is much less likely that children are
taught to chase cars. Rather, these children are more prone to simply play in
the street or lane waiting for cars driven by Forenzies to come along so that
they can shout, “Give me money,” or “Give me pen.”
Shopping in Ethiopia
1. There is a rule
that is standard for all Ethiopian shops, that whenever you enter a shop and
ask for an item that they would usually have, it is the rule that the first
shop you enter does not have the item today. Finding the same problem at the
next three shops, finally at the fifth shop you find the item you want, but
they only have one.
2. In every shop
there are several prices for every item. There is the first offered price given
only to Ethiopians, the negotiated final price (also given only to other
Ethiopians), and there’s the Forenzie price. The Forenzie price is normally twenty
five to fifty percent higher than the first offered price to other Ethiopians.
3. For shops that
advertise that they have an item or provide a service, it is the rule that they
never have the item nor do they provide the service. Some examples include the following:
a)
Stationary stores
never have the stationary you want.
b)
Stores that advertise
that they have fax and scanning service, never provide that service.
c)
Businesses that
advertise ice cold drinks serve only warm drinks, and furthermore, none even
know the meaning of “ice cold” since they have never seen ice.
4. It is the rule that
all customers over the age of forty five sit down on a special chair provided
in every shop while waiting for an item to be found in the shop. It is not
allowed for this older person to browse around the shop while waiting. If the
customer is waiting for an order of more than one item, tea will be served
immediately. If in the rare instance there is no chair for the customer, one
will be found across the street and brought to the shop.
5. Special rules apply
for different shops. For example, any shop that sells items made from ordinary
glass will advertise that they sell mirrors. Nothing else will be mentioned,
even though they may sell anything from mirrors, to plate window glass, to
automobile window glass, picture frame glass or ornamental glass bricks.
Products and Services
1. It is the rule
that all products whether imported or made in Ethiopia
2. Following Rule 1
above, it is the rule that all hammer handles, ax handles, pick handles or
other hand tools in that category (excluding digging tools) have pipes or
pieces of reinforcing steel for handles. No original handle is ever used more
than one time.
3. All digging
tools, also following the rules above, are purchased without handles. For
handles, any stick of any shape or size can be used. Most preferred are those
that are too large to hold comfortably or those that are too crooked and
covered with small poking branch ends. Any pole or branch is recognized as
useful for handles unless it has already been destined for fire wood.
4. All shops are temporarily
out of what you want. They will order it, or send a runner to get it at some
other shop, but you can be assured that whatever you want will not be
immediately available.
5. All imported
goods (mostly tools) are so poorly constructed or manufactured that the normal
comment about them is, “That’s made in China.” The truth of the matter is that
this is correct.
6. Market Day is the
only day that items are available in the Market. Vendors are always available
at the market on days other than Market Day, but interestingly enough, they
have no products on display since it is not “Market Day.” Apparently, they are only
there to protect their space in the Market until the next Market Day.
7. There are certain
days in every market place when more products are available than on the other
days. Market Days are usually designated in three different categories and also
by days of the week, “Small Market Day,” “Medium Market Day,” and “Big Market
Day.”
8. All Market Days
are different in adjoining cities or towns, so that if one really needs an item
and they have the time to shop and travel from town to town, any day is Market Day.
9. All corrugated
iron sheets used in most buildings in Ethiopia come in three classes of
thickness, A, B, and C. “A-Grade” is
considered the “best” and is very thin. “B-Grade” is called “medium” and is
extra thin, and “C-Grade” is what is used most since it is the most economical,
and is graded just slightly above aluminum foil.
The Strange Behavior of Ethiopian Animals
1. It is the rule
that all Ethiopian domesticated animals that graze along the highways that are
not being cared for by their owners are always on the wrong side of the road. Whatever
it is that they are doing, must therefore be done on the other side of the
road. It follows, therefore, that these animals must wait until an automobile
approaches to cross to the other side of the road and so any driver approaching
these animals that are grazing along the road knows that as soon as they are
close enough to be seen by the animal, it or they will immediately cross the
road in front of the on-coming vehicle.
2. All dogs that
live in villages especially where there are dirt roads crossing by the village
homes, are bound to chase all cars passing their homes. Unlike Western dogs,
however, these dogs all “chase” the car by running in line with and as close to
the front of the tire of car as is possible.
3.
There is a breed of
bird called Ethiopian Hornbill that always seems to travel in pairs. These birds
can often be seen grazing in fields in many parts of the country. It is said that since these birds are always
grazing together, that no matter how a person tries, they can never step in
between two of these birds. Furthermore, it is believed by a large portion of
the Ethiopian population that if anyone is able to walk between two of these
birds that they will forever thereafter become wealthy.
4. All horses that
have reached that age when they are no longer useful as cart-horses or
otherwise beasts of burden find their homes in the middle of the paved
highways.
BROKEN TAIL DOGS
It is widely known throughout all of south and central Ethiopia
Typical Broken Tail Dog
|
Since these animals are very small compared to the size of
hyenas, owners have come to believe that they must look fierce along with being
fierce, so soon after the dogs are born, the owners break their tails and
splint them in a certain way so that then the tail of the dog heals, it is
always facing up with the end turned toward the front. Thus, they are aptly
called, “Broken Tail Dogs.”
When I first learned of the strange phenomenon I doubted
its validity, until I remembered from my childhood the raising of dogs that my
father did as a hobby. The dogs we raised were hunting dogs, and just after
each dog was born, my father cut the tail of the dog off. I was always told, that this act made the
dogs better hunters. From that memory, I concluded that the story of the Broken
Tail Dogs of Ethiopia must be true.
THE USE OF DRUGS
IN ETHIOPIA
I was always amazed while visiting Ethiopia by the lack of cigarettes
smokers. So few people use tobacco over there that it is actually rare to see
anyone, man or woman, smoking in public. When I inquired about this fact, I was
told it was not for health reasons that people in Ethiopia did not smoke,
rather, it was because of the cost of cigarettes. This became clearer to me on
occasions when I was purchasing items in some of the small local shops that
vendors sold cigarettes one at a time, never by the pack.
I did learn during in my stay in the country that there is
a much greater drug habit of people in the country than I had seen in any other
location in which I had traveled, and that was due to the use of a drug called
locally, “Khat.” This drug, (a freshly
cut green leaf) grown throughout Ethiopia in the more wet areas of the country
comes from a leaf about the size and shape of a bay leaf that is chewed
primarily when the leaf is green and fresh. In the area where I was living most
khat came from large agricultural area about fifty kilometers south Arsi
Negelle, so truckloads of this material was always moving north through the
supply lines that led to Addis Ababa and other more populated areas.
Khat was locally quite cheap and was sold along the street
in every town that I visited. It was also considered legal, and I once heard
that the reason for this was that the Prime Minister was a user of the drug,
and it would have been “politically incorrect” to make the use of the drug
illegal. In most other parts of the world, however, this drug is considered a dependency-forming
drug and is deemed illegal.
The shops that sold this material in the villages along the
main highways were always well advertised–not with signs saying “Khat,” but
rather with leaves from bananas that were hung from the edge and awnings of the
buildings. These were very visible and popular places and from the visual
evidence I noticed in all the town (not so much in and around the village
homes), chewing khat was the thing that most men did while they stood around on
the streets in small crowds and as they visited the coffee houses.
The interesting thing that I observed and heard among the
men whom I knew regularly chewed khat was their level of denial that the drug
was unsafe. Everyone I talked to about the drug who were chewers, said that it
was simply a stimulant and that it made them feel good. None believed that it
was addictive and all claimed that it was safe to use. Evidence, however, of
the attitudes and actions of the locals whom I knew were chewers was to the
contrary. Research that I did on the drug, also confirmed that it was a
dangerous drug that had long-range deleterious effects on those who used the
drug, and that it ranked as more dangerous than marijuana.
There were a number of incidents, three which I want to
relate here that confirmed for me, at least, that the use of khat in Ethiopia was
having ill effects on the country as a whole and was something that if not
curbed would have very serious implications for the overall development of the
country.
The first incident happened on Easter Sunday of 2006 in
Arsi Negelle just across from the ENFE office. That morning about 6 A.M., a
group of people, a church choir, in fact, were walking along the road, all
dressed in white as is normal for church-goers. They were traveling south along
the right side of the road on their way to a Christian Church not far from the
office. Coming north at that same time and on the other side of the road was a
truck bringing a load of khat from some supply area, likely in Hawassa where
much of the drug is grown. The driver, it was reported was chewing khat while he
was driving. When he approached the people on the other side of the road, for
an unknown reason, he swerved the truck to their side directly into the
church-goers. Eighteen people were
instantly killed and others maimed as the truck plowed through the crowd and
stopped after falling into a storm drain on that side of the road. The driver
left the vehicle and ran immediately into the main part of the village which
was not far from where the incident occurred.
At that same time, at our office location just across the
street and to the north about one hundred meters, our guard heard the commotion
along with a villager who was waiting at the office with his wife and dying
child who was to be picked up by Leah Maesato (the Intern working with me at
the time) and myself to be taken to an Addis hospital for this newborn’s
operation. The man and the ENFE guard upon seeing the truck loaded with khat,
rather than running to the aid of the dying who were scattered all over the
road, climbed onto the truck loaded with khat and removed two of the bundles
(khat was normally harvested green and bound together with string and large
banana leaves, each bundle about three feet long and one foot in diameter). Both
men initially took one bundle, and returned to the office where they hid it in
the pit latrine behind the ENFE office.
They wanted more of the stuff after retrieving the first
bundle, and were busy making plans on how they would sell it later when the
commotion of the incident was over, so they ran back over to the crash site and
were about to take some more when the police arrived and saw them attempting to
take some more of the stuff. Both men were arrested and immediately. The ENFE
guard didn’t resist, but the man who was waiting for us to take him to Addis
broke away from the police after a brief struggle and ran off into town and
disappeared like the driver of the vehicle had done leaving his wife and sick
baby behind.
During the next two hours before Leah and I arrived to pick
up the baby and its parents, the dead and injured had been removed and the
truck confiscated to police headquarters. We only observed the mass of blood on
the road and heard the story when we arrived at the office.
This sad commentary with the missing driver of the vehicle,
I understand, was never solved, and in addition, it was reported that in the
town south of Arsi Negelle, he had ran over two people and killed them there
before arriving in Arsi Negelle for his massacre of the choir members.
For the next several days after this incident, I watched
the local papers and listened to the news of local events, but never heard
anything relating to this incident nor of the eighteen people that were slaughtered
by this mad man. In an effort to make this incident know to the public, I wrote
an E-mail to CNN and Reuters News. I received an automatic acknowledgment of my
letter from CNN, but heard nothing from the other source. My guess was, that
since this drug is considered legal in the country, there would be no mention
of it and no connection made with the chewing driver and the massacre.
Not long after this incident while it was still fresh in
everyone’s mind, I am sure, I was asked by the local staff manager of ENFE to
take two people to Addis Ababa from the local government medical headquarters.
It seemed that the local government clinics had run out of medicine and had
asked ENFE if it would be possible for us to take these two men to the medical
supply house of the Ministry of Health and pick up a load of medicine. These
local medical officials usual form of transportation was either broken down or
not available, I learned, and our truck was available, so they figured this was
a good way to get the supply. One of the men who would accompany me was the
director of the entire government medical attachment in Arsi Negelle, and the
other man was the next ranking person in the organization, head of finances.
I agreed to take the men and met them in the early morning
on the next Monday to transport them to the medical supply house in Addis Ababa. The drive there was over one hundred and
sixty five miles one way. They wanted to get back that day, so we rushed as
much as possible to get there, pick up the supplies and returned that evening. It
was an exhausting drive, especially since it became dark about 8:00 P.M. as we
neared Arsi Negelle. I was tired from so much driving, and was likely more
stressed and nervous that I would have been under more normal conditions.
About fifty miles north of our final destination, the
Director who had been quiet for some time asked me if it would be all right if
he chewed. I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant, so I asked him if he meant
chew khat. He said that’s what he wanted to do, and I assumed he had some with
him that I had not seen. I was infuriated remembering the incident some weeks
before with the man and the massacre of the eighteen people in Arsi Negelle,
and immediately told the man that I would not allow him to “chew” in the ENFE
truck. I didn’t stop there, but went on to chastise the man over and over
asking him if he remembered the massacre, and if he thought it was appropriate
that he, the Director of Medicine for the entire Arsi Negelle Region knew of
the ill effects of the drug, and etc. etc.
I didn’t let up on the man for at least ten miles while I fumed and
continued to grill him on the effects of the drug. At first he and the other
man denied that there was any harm in using the drug, then, I am sure to pacify
me he began to agree that he shouldn’t be using the drug. Finally I used the
term, “Shame on you” to let him know how angry I was that he had even suggested
that I allow him to chew in the truck, knowing that this term, shame on you,
was one of the most damning terms anyone could use on another person. I didn’t
care, and I am sure the man was very mad at me for getting after him and his
partner, but that was how I felt.
On an earlier occasion sometime in February of 2006, Lea
and I had traveled to the border town of Moyale
where we met Nigatu and were there to assist him in bringing our Toyota Tundra
truck across the border and further on to Addis
Ababa
Leah and I were amazed at the energy of the continued
dialog between these men as they continued their chewing all through the day,
but as the day dragged on, some of them just quit talking, but continued to sit
with the crowd like they were in some kind of daze. All these men seemed to be
very well dressed and drove nice cars, indicating to me that they were fairly
well off and were likely merchants there to take goods across the border and
into Ethiopia.
Many times as I was moving about in different villages like
Arsi Negelle and Shashamene where I saw these drugs being used and sold so
widely, I was offered and encouraged to purchase leaves from vendors and
individuals. I always refused, and was continually amazed at how open this drug
use was practiced. I did not, however, see any instance of the drug being used
by women.
OCCURRANCES OF
ABUSE OF WOMEN
During
my several visits to Ethiopia I had the opportunity to interact with many of
the local women through the Women’s Committees we set up in most of the
villages. From discussions I had with some of these women it was clear to me
that for the most part, they were considered as property, not people. I came to
conclude also that most of what I saw or heard about could be attributed to the
attitudes of the men and the influence of their religious leaders, particularly
those of the Muslim faith. Everywhere I went women were doing most all the work
and men were standing around watching them, ordering them to do it, or just
leaving them to the work needing to be done. Only on rare occasions and at
certain times of the year did I see men doing work that served their families.
It seemed that what work they did was limited to plowing of fields, some
planting of seeds and harvesting crops. While I did observe some women plowing
field, in most instances where I saw people doing this, men were in the
majority. This does not mean that the women were not working in the fields. On
the contrary, they were there, weeding, harvesting, and in some cases
irrigating.
Many
men did accompany of donkey carts going to market, and I saw them even
assisting the donkeys by pushing the carts up steep hills or assisting them
with their heavy loads going through ditches or steep inclines in the tracks. But
for the most part, when it came to such duties as gardening, fetching water,
taking animals to water, cooking, taking care of and herding animals, cutting
wood (except in town Arsi Negelle where the cutting of wood for making of
alcohol was almost exclusively done by men), women were the ones I observed
doing this work. In many instances, young boys and girls did much of the tending
and grazing of animals and taking them to water, but even then it seemed to be
under the direction of the women in the family.
Men
seemed to be the exclusive builders of homes, yard fences and animal
corrals. However, unless it was the
harvest or plowing seasons, I did not see many men around their houses much.
Men were visiting other men, hanging around the village centers and visiting in
town along the main streets. I came to believe that the only time men were at
home was when it was time to have sex with their women. The number pregnant
women I saw everywhere was staggering.
In
particular with the Muslim population which made up over sixty percent of the
population of the Arsi Negelle District of over two hundred and fifty thousand
people, it was the women of this population that seemed to be the worst off. Christian
women were not much better off, but still seemed to be responsible for all the
same duties as Muslim women. What affected my opinion that the Muslim women
were worse off than the Christian ones came from accounts I heard from several
Christian men about the treatment of women by the Muslim men and from personal
observations I made while visiting the homes of Muslims.
This
dominance of women by the Muslim men begins very early with the Muslim girls.
For example, records that Leah Maesato, an Intern that worked with me for
several months during 2005 and 2006, showed that over ninety percent of young
girls were circumcised during their years of puberty. This is done in an overt
attempt to quell the pleasures of sex. Most of these young girls were also
promised in marriage when they are as young as nine or ten years old. Some were even married off before they reached
high school age. These early marriages contribute to the high incidence of female
genital mutilation problems with women when they have their first child at
these early ages. Still prevalent in some villages, young girls eyelids are
being operated on by cutting slits in the eyelid which after healing is
supposed to make the young woman more attractive and desirable. Tattooing of
young women’s faces is another practice that is done everywhere in rural
Ethiopia for the same purpose. Young women’s destinies, imposed upon them by
the Elders and by these old customs, are to get married early, have many
children and take care of their husbands.
The
Muslim marriage customs involving these young women is further testimony of the
attitude of men toward their women and young girls. It is customary, for
example for the father of the young woman who is getting married to demand of
the groom a large dowry that in most cases includes a large sum of money, which
seems to amount to at least 10,000 Birr (about $1165 or more) along with a gift
of animals to the father of the bride. Then after this “sale” of the girl and
the marriage ceremony is complete, the father instructs the groom that from
that moment on the daughter is no longer a member of the father’s family, but
is now the property of the
groom. Further, he is instructed that
the girl must obey her new husband and that he can beat her, or treat her any
way he wishes to maintain dominance over her as her “owner.”
It
was apparent to me when observing many of the women in the villages by
attending Mother’s Groups and other gatherings where women were about that they
were physically abused to a high degree since bruises were very common sights,
apparent on exposed parts of their bodies and their faces. In one case that I
personally observed, but was too far away from to take any action, I saw an
older man chasing a young teen-age girl down a path, finally catching her, and
while holding her finding a stick that he brutally beat her with. On other
occasions, I heard about these beatings and even listened as some men told
about taking actions with their women to keep them in line.
Other
instances of women’s horrible treatment were very apparent in all areas of the
rural villages. While traveling around I frequently saw women cutting down
trees with simple, crude tools, taking those same trees and splitting them into
manageable sizes so they could be taken to market, loading their donkeys and
traveling to market with the wood, and even in many cases loading these heavy
burdens on their backs for the trip to the marketplace. I saw women preparing
gardens using crude hand tools to plow the plot, many times with small children
strapped to their backs or with children hanging onto their skirts. I saw many
women carrying large jerry cans on their backs full of water that they were
carrying from the rivers or other watering holes to their homes. I observed
women walking to market, many times as much as ten to twenty miles, then
carrying heavy loads of grain or other goods on their backs when they returned
home. Rarely would I see a man with these women assisting them with these
loads. Most often these women I saw going to market were taking their small
children with them and many times carrying them on their backs or side-saddle
on their hips.
In
their homes since most women were still cooking over open flames inside their
huts, most mothers were subject to severe and chronic respiratory diseases, and
most had bad backs from bending over the open fire pits to prepare meals. And
because medical help was far away and expensive for these poor women, and in
some villages nonexistent, most suffered these ailments without medical help
and often died young because of them. Along with tending to their household
chores such as cooking and cleaning clothing, these same women tended the
family’s animals that in some very dry areas required that they herd their
animals many miles at least every other day for water. Included with this task
was their responsibility to maintain a water supply for their household needs
that on average meant that they had to provide as much as two liters of water
every day for every member of their family (including their husband). Where
families on average are eight to ten members in size, this meant that every
other day women were required to supply thirty-two to forty liters of water (eight
to ten gallons of water every other day). With water weighing over seven pounds
per gallon, if women were carrying this water on their backs (which many of
them did), this would mean several trips, rather than just one trip to the
water source. And if fact, most of the
women I saw carrying water on their backs used a small jerry can that had a
capacity of ten liters (2.6 gallons) which meant their loads were about eighteen
to twenty pounds per can. Considering that most of the water sources were in
rivers that were in deep gullies cut by erosion, this was still an arduous task
to maintain day after day to fill the needs of the family.
Rarely
did I ever see any show of affection publicly between men and women. I did see
it with young high school age children, but only on a few occasions did I see
men holding hands with their spouse or with their arms around them. Attitudes
of the men in the villages seemed to be very consistent with the work that women
did—that is, the men didn’t seem to care how bad off their women were nor were
even concerned that they suffered these awful lives, just so they were able to
work and provide for them.
Most
Muslim men had more than one wife and all were treated in this same manner as
described above. Most lived together in the same house, and reared their
children jointly. And while there were likely dominant wives and favorites,
they were all under the same rules of the house as the others.
In
the house where I lived for nine of my last thirteen-month stay in Ethiopia, I
had two guards that I hired to keep watch over my house. One guard was single,
and the other one, Gemacho, was married. After I got to know Gemacho I became totally
amazed at how insignificant his wife and female children seemed to be to him. He
and his family were Muslim, but he had one wife only. He lived over eight kilometers from my home,
and it was not uncommon for him to demand of his wife that she prepare meals
for him and bring them to the house, waiting while he ate then returning the
dishes to their home after. This man has eight children, the oldest being sixteen
years old at the time. He lived in a two-room
rectangular mud hut with a metal roof. While he was a Community Worker, and was
a specialist at building latrines and smokeless stoves, he had not built one
for his family. His wife did all her
clothes washing in the saline waters of Lake Shala, which I measured one day to
be about five miles from their house. Twice a week his wife walked to the lake
with her small children, and while they played, she washed all their clothing
and dried it while it hung on branches of local bushes.
Gemacho’s
oldest daughter was attending high school in the town of Arsi Negelle at the
time he as my home guard. Like many parents whose homes were far away from
school, Gemacho arranged for his daughter to live in town with a number of
other students in a home managed by a married couple. One day during the month
of May of 2006 the girl was approached by a man as she left the high school.
She knew the man since he was from her village. When he approached the girl who
at the time was with two other classmates, he man gave her a letter which was a
proposal for marriage. She read the letter while he waited then told the man
she was not interested in marriage, but rather wanted to continue her
education. The next day she was met again by this same man who had brought
several of his friends along. Then along the roadside in plain daylight he and
the other men abducted Gemacho’s daughter and took her away in a car.
I
heard about the kidnapping the next day when Gemacho came to me asking for
money to pay the police to help him find his daughter and bring her back. Gemacho
initially showed much grief and sorrow about the abduction and had such a
convincing story that I gave him 200 Birr and let him have the day off to go
with the police. He continued to seem very distraught the following few days while
he reported to me the present status of the police investigation, but after a
few days, he seemed to be getting over it, though he reported that the police
were unable to do anything about the situation and couldn’t find his daughter. After
about two weeks Gemacho reported to me that they had found his daughter and
that three of the men who assisted in the kidnapping were in jail. He claimed
by then that the police were going to charge the man with the crime and bring
his daughter back and he needed more money to pay the police for their trouble
and transportation to where they had to go to recover the daughter. I had heard
that same day that Gemacho had taken money from the two interns who also lived
in the house with me, so I refused him another grant and said he would have to
find money elsewhere.
Over
the next few weeks I followed my guard’s case with his missing daughter asking
questions and getting more and more bizarre answers as time went on. First, he
said that his daughter had been taken to a village that was close by and that
the police were pursuing this man and his accomplices. Eventually, three of the
men who had assisted the kidnapper were arrested, but the man had, my guard
learned, already forced his daughter into marriage and had fled to another town
over one hundred kilometers (60 miles) away. My guard said he had paid the police
over 800 Birr to conduct the investigation and that he had no more money and
would not be able to pursue this matter further. As time went on Gemacho’s
story seemed to be getting fishier while at the same time his attitude about
his missing daughter seemed to be relaxing. Finally after several weeks of my
asking daily about the situation with his missing, now married off daughter, I
quit asking since I heard from my other guard that Gemacho was on a crusade to get
a dowry from this man for the marriage of his daughter. He had apparently given
up on trying to get his daughter back. It was like he has written her off and
no longer cared for her safety or welfare.
Strange
practices abound in this country. One that I first heard about from several
sources and about later learned first-hand involved the subtle powers of the Muslim
clergy in this country, especially as regards to men’s dominance over women. While
this comment seems more relevant for Muslims, I believe it is also prevalent
with other religions—especially the more prominent Orthodox Christian religious
sect which dominate nearly forty percent of the population of Ethiopia. The
heads of the Muslim clergy, called Imams locally, seem to have a very strong
hold on the Muslim populations in their villages. First, all of them seemed to
be richer than other villagers within their domain, and I learned from several
sources that they are all paid by some Saudi Islamic source, and that this
payment they got each month was over 1200 Birr (or about $138), well above the
national average for monthly wages. These men were also the caretakers of the
many new mosques that were springing up all over the rural areas—also funded, I
was told, by the Saudi Muslims. On these occasions I mentioned, I saw these
Imams demanding of their followers respect and obedience to their commands. When
I was working in the villages where the dominant religious mix was Muslim and
most of the workers I had with me were Muslim, these Imams would always be
there to check out what we were doing, criticize all aspects of it, and then at
the regular prayer times, call the men away from their work to go to the mosque
for prayer.
I
was often told by my workers that these men (the Imams) were to be obeyed or
they would be punished and religious rights would be taken away from them. On
the issue of women, the male members of the sect were constantly told that
their women should be kept in seclusion and not be allowed to attend Women’s
Groups that we were organizing as part of our development programs for the
community, and that the young women were not to be allowed the government
schooling, even if the family could afford it. It was these girl’s places, they
were told, to prepare themselves for marriage, and that they too, should be
seeking more wives. Men were told that the more children they could bear from
these multiple marriages, the more blessed they would become.
One
Imam that I became acquainted with in the village of Gala Adelle was a short
sober man who spent a lot of time hanging around a project we were undertaking
for an above ground water tank for the village. If women came by to volunteer
for work, as many of them did, he would demand that they return to their homes and
resume their work at home. The men who helped me stood by without comment when
he drove their women off. And when prayer time came around, he was there to
tell the Muslim men to leave the job, no matter if we had wet concrete waiting
to be placed. It made no difference to him, and they obeyed him to the letter,
dropping their tools and without apology just walking away from the jobsite.
In
December of 2005 we had an Expedition at this village site, and of course, this
Imam was there and visible at all occasions, but never participated. On this
expedition we had several doctors and nurses in attendance, and during the
expedition our nurses learned that one of three of this Imam’s young wives was
about to have a baby. On the third day of the affair, this man came to the
medical tent and asked if any of the nurses could be in attendance as a Midwife
for the delivery of his wife’s baby. One of the nurses gladly accommodated the
man and left for the short walk to his hut to deliver the baby. The delivery
was successful and much attention was paid to the father.
It
became known after this delivery that the child that was born to the Imam’s
third and youngest wife, a girl of no more than fifteen years of age, was his twenty-seventh
child. I guessed the Imam was in his early or late fifty’s. I had seen many of his children around the
project since I had been working near his compound over several weeks. It
seemed like all the children in the village bore his resemblance. I never knew
he had so many children. All were ragged and all of the younger ones showed
signs of being seriously undernourished (their largely protruding stomachs were
the common thing amongst young undernourished children in the Region). But
despite that, I learned that this man was the richest man in the village and
that he had over one hundred head of cattle, several dozen goats and a large
farm. One day when my curiosity was piqued by this man’s wealth and the number
of sick children he had, through an interpreter I asked the man how he
justified having so many children when it seemed like he could not take care of
the simple needs of those that he had. Proudly he answered my questions saying
that God commanded that he have many children and that for every one he had he
would be blessed beyond measure. No matter that he couldn’t take care of their
needs (and this was puzzling because of his apparent wealth), God would
provide, he told me.
Our
data collection surveys of this village showed that Gale Adelle was one of the
poorest in the district, was also the driest with the least amount of gardens
and tillable land. This village also had the highest incident of plural
marriages of any district village and the most severe health problems. Much of
the health conditions of this village, I was sure, was due to the influence of
this evil man, the Imam, who had such a grasp on the village and its
activities.
There
does seem to be some light in this awful story that is so prevalent in the
villages of the Arsi Negelle District. Women’s Committees (informally called
Mother’s Groups) were being formed in each of the District villages in large
numbers—all under the aegis of Engage Now Foundation, Ethiopia. Last count in mid-2006 was that there were
over four thousand women committed to and were attending these meetings twice
per week set up in small groups of about thirty women in each of the twenty
villages where these programs were active. The groups were organized by our
Community Workers who encourage the women to participate and receive training
during their meetings. Training consisted of Functional Literacy, Health,
Hygiene, Family Finance, Micro Enterprise, Gardening, Simple Technologies and
other relevant subjects. Meetings were held twice each week for most groups and
last a minimum of two hours. Each group was organized with a President,
Secretary and Treasurer. Moneys in the amount of 1 Birr were collected from
each woman at each meeting. The money collected was placed in a bank account
set up under the name of the Treasurer and Engage Now Foundation, Ethiopia. During
all these meetings the Community Workers (men and women) encourage the
participants to take charge of their lives and challenge such traditions that were
debilitating to their health, welfare and the welfare of their children. They were
encouraged to make sure all their children attend school, and that especially
young girls were encouraged to go. Despite the demands of their husbands and
the religious clergy who fought against this new program for their women, the
stronger ones endured and came to the meetings. When any women’s group had
accumulated a bank savings of around 4000 to 6000 Birr that money was drawn out
of the account, matched with an Engage Now interest-free loan (actually funds
allocated for this purpose out of Ascend funds), and the money was distributed
back to the women for the purpose of engaging in Micro Enterprise. Most used
the money to buy livestock but all were committed to use the money to support
some sort of new business.
The
program with these women visibly changed the lives of all who attended.
Eventually most of the husbands and families of these women were in support,
albeit they are not getting full support from the clergy and some angry
husbands. The loans to the women were consistently paid back one hundred
percent, and more women continued to join the groups as the word spread on
their success. Group sizes were limited to a certain number, around thirty, so
when more women wanted to join a full group, a new groups was organized. As
time went on several villages had more than one Women’s Committees fully
organized and operating. While the literacy part of the program fell behind
(mostly because of the lack of training of Community Workers), changes were
being made to improve that activity to make it more functional. When I left the
country in 2006 the question I had, was, as the influence of the Muslim clergy
grows and continues to be fed by Saudi funds, will this program be able to
survive. There was hope that it would and that the power these women had shown
against these traditional and compelling odds, what was obtained from the training
models we introduced would overshadow the current dominance the men have over
their women and young girls.
ONE-LEGGED DUCKS
There’s
something very special about one-legged ducks, and believe it or not, they
exist in Ethiopia
My
first sighting of a one-legged duck was in the town of Meki
Shy
didn’t see the bird at first and didn’t believe me when I said I had spotted a
one-legged duck perching in a tree. I had caught her in a couple of jokes prior
to this sighting and she was a little “shy” about believing me that I had seen
a one-legged duck. I asked her to look, that I was telling the truth this time.
She did, and we both confirmed that this indeed was a one-legged duck. Shy had
grown up on a farm in Idaho and had seen many ducks in her life, but like me,
neither of us had ever seen a one-legged duck.
We
talked about this rare animal—at least at the time we assumed it was rare—all
the way home to Arsi Negelle and for days after trying to figure out what it
was about this bird that caused it to perch in
trees first, then on top of that having only one leg.
To
my surprise, not long after this first encounter with one-legged ducks, we saw
another one in a village not far from Arsi Negelle. Later we saw several more
since our attention now was in the trees looking for these strange birds. Over
the next few weeks I pondered on a number of questions about these ducks and even
asked several of my colleagues (local Program Coordinators) if they had ever
seen one-legged ducks. They all said they had but never thought much about the
phenomenon. I wasn’t surprised at their comments since there had been many
previous occasions where I had seen things that amazed me and pointed out those
same things to these men, always with the same response, “You must understand,
this is the Rift Valley.” I never really
knew what that meant, but I did know that we were in the Rift Valley, and I
already understood that the Rift Valley was a strange place, so I accepted
their comments without question.
I
couldn’t get these ducks off my mind while I kept seeing them here and there,
and was most puzzled about the fact that they were always perched in trees when
I saw them. I was pretty sure that all ducks lived in the water and on land
eating bugs and grass, but I had never seen or heard of ducks perching in
trees. One day after discussing these ducks as length, we decided to look them
up in the Internet. We found several varieties of ducks that perch in trees and
one even that lived in Africa, the Fulvous Tree Duck. But no mention of one
legged tree ducks. We concluded it must be something about Rift Valley after
all.
Finally,
however, it dawned on me why these particular birds perched in trees. It was
simple, but I had just never figured it out before. I’ve observed ducks many
times in my life in ponds, lakes and on the ground near bodies of water, and in
every case when these duck readied for takeoff, they always ran a bit along the
ground or water before getting airborne. Whether it was on the water or land,
they seemed always to need to run a bit to get momentum before their heavy
bodies would become airborne. I could just imagine how difficult that would be
for a one-legged duck to do this. Hop, hop, flop, try again, hop, hop,
flop. It just wouldn’t be possible, I
concluded. So the logical conclusion was, if a one-legged duck was perched in a
tree, he or she simply had to lean forward a bit, spread his or her wings and suddenly
the bird would be airborne. Shy agreed with my conclusion and so we celebrated.
I had a warm Pepsi and Shy had a Miranda Orange.
MY LITTLE SOUL MATE
I
was touched by many people in Ethiopia
Weeks
went by and this little girl would always be there when I came to this home to
work or otherwise visit to show others what we were doing, and each time her
expression was the same. Then one day on
a whim, I stepped away from the workplace and sat down on the ground. The
little girl remained a “safe” distance from me, but I called her over to me
anyway. The woman who owned the home was there along with a few other adult
women and a couple of local men, and when I beckoned the little girl to come
over by me, and she didn’t respond, they took her by the hand and led her over
next to me. Once she was by me, she seemed to be okay, but her expression
didn’t change one bit—still the sullen face. I took her by the hand then, and
brought her over closer to me, at the same time removing a large Handy-wipe wash-up
I had in my pocket and started to wash her face with it. Her face and hands
were so dusty and dirty that it took two full clothes to clean her up, and
there under all that dirt, as I had expected, was this beautiful little, albeit
still sullen face.
Everyone
marveled at this gesture and commented as I praised the girl for being willing
to have me wash her face, then interpreting through the Program Coordinator who
was with me that day, I asked him to tell the woman whom I thought at the time
was the girl’s mother to keep her face clean since it would keep the flies away
from her face and eyes. By that time the tank was full of water most of the
time, so there was ample water available to do this, so she promised she would
keep this child clean any time she came around. It was much later that I
learned that this little girl was a neighbor and daughter of one of the
Community Workers from this village.
Weeks
and months went by, but every time I arrived at this village to view some of
the projects we had done there or repair things that were not working so well,
the little girl would continue to show up and stand by me like she had always done.
I sensed there was something special about our relationship and the only way I
could describe it was she seemed to be a soul mate of some sort. Many years before
I had read a book about soul mates that claimed everyone has someone in the
world that for some unknown reason is connected with us by means of some
metaphysical element. Over the years I have noticed and even written about such
occurrences I have had with people whom I either knew some way or didn’t know
whom I connected with in special ways.
After reading that book I believing that there are certain people in
this world with whom I have special connections, this little girl seemed to be
one of those people.
 
My Little Soul Mate’s Sullen Face
|
One of the Many Washings
|
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Over
the period of time that I was working or visiting the Gale Adelle village
between 2005 and 2006 I waited for the day for the day that I would somehow
with my actions toward this little soul mate of mine see her expression change
and have her warm up to me a little more. During each visit when I would see
her I would take her hand or attempt to do so, and finally she got so she would
respond to that, but never did her facial expression change. I even washed her
face a couple more times to see if she would smile or even look different, but
though she seemed to be more willing to hold my hand or even walk with me from
place to place, she still had that strange look on her face that never seemed
to change.
One
day, during the 2006 June Expedition I was taking a few of the U.S. volunteers out to see several of the
projects I had worked on and completed and had stopped at the village of Gale Adelle
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