Ethiopia Trip Update #2
Daniel and I just returned from five days in the rural parts Ethiopia heading south of Addis Ababa to the towns of Awasa (that is the regional capital for the province) to Arba Minch and the Nechisar National Park. This is an area that is only about 60K from the Kenya border.
We first drove down to Awasa (about a five hour drive) where Yohannes used to live and where Ethiopia Reads has a regular library and a mobile library that is pulled by a donkey that goes out into the neighborhoods and kids read books. It was really great seeing all of the young children reading books and some of the kids read the books out loud to us. After lunch we headed another 6 hours south to Arba Minch that is a large city in Southwest Ethiopia. It is a town with grubby streets, very chaotic but with lots of charm and we did not arrive until night and made a reservation at the Swayne’s Hotel.
This hotel is used for people that are going on a safari into the Nechisar National Park and it was the first place in five days that we saw western white people. We got up early the next morning and our driver took us into the national park and we drove through a lot of jungle, rain forests and finally arrived in the Savannah or grasslands where we started to see large numbers of beautiful Zebra’s. There were herds and herds of these elegant animals and you are able to get surprising close to them without spooking them. The grasslands are immense in size and we also saw warthogs, wildebeests, kudu (a form of antelope that has big horns that point straight up in the air). Of course we also saw a lot of monkeys in the jungle riding back to the hotel.
We stayed at the Swayne’s Hotel which looks out at the national park and a lake and is very green and beautiful. With all of the poverty and incredible social issues in Ethiopia it was nice to concentrate on its beauty. We got up early the next morning and went out on our little patio in the back of the room facing the mountains and there were a dozen big Baboons just playing right next to where we were sitting. They were just running around and looking for food for their morning meal. It was great.
We then left in the morning and drove North to Awasa. I am fascinated to understand the culture from riding almost 12 hours each way from Addis to Arba Minch. About 85% of the people in Ethiopia live in rural areas and isolated villages throughout the country. Women are always walking on the sides of the road carrying either big piles of wood, bamboo, or water jugs on their backs. Donkeys are the primary means of both carrying wood and grain – Teff (used to make injera bread). Whenever we were near a village, hundreds and hundreds of people are just either walking into town or walking to their huts. Isuzu’s are barreling down the streets and our driver, Solomon was just weaving in and out honking his horn, trying to avoid the donkeys, cows and goats that are everywhere.
Every place we stopped for gas, or to buy some fruit, within 30 seconds kids surrounded our beat up Toyota Land Cruiser Sometimes there were 20-30 kids at a time. We gave one of them a empty plastic water bottle and all the kids started to fight over it. Every so often there is a barricade on the road for contraband coming into Ethiopia from Kenya or Sudan or Somalia.
The days are very hot, sunny, and very dusty in most places. Everywhere we drove there were children and the one’s who are attending school always have uniforms, the others just don’t go to school. Women are walking everywhere on the roads carrying heavy loads and the men are more scarce and almost never carrying anything. Sometimes they are driving these donkey carts that are loaded down with banana leaves or wood.
Driving through the villages people are living in either wood framed houses with tin roofs or most of the time in these huts that were either made of mud and straw or if they lived in an area with rain, made of reeds, bamboo, and banana leaf. If the area had some water, we saw a lot of banana’s, mango, some vegetables (tomatoes, onion, watermelon). In the dry areas it was all brown, and parched with very limited water. People were constantly carrying water containers that were big red or yellow plastic jugs. Most of their diet is goat and beef and in the dry areas the animals were very thin. Everyplace where there was water, people were taking baths in the shallow river/stream and filling up the water jugs from the same watering hole.
We spent one night at the Hotel Pima in downtown Awasa that is according to the guide books, the “best hotel in town”. We had to walk up 5 flights of stairs into this tiny room where not much really worked. Music was blasting all night, but at least we had a shower even though it was cold. The next night we drove about an hour north and stayed at the Aregash Lodge in Yirgalene. This is a town where Yohannes went to high school and it is about 4 hours south of Addis.. This lodge had 10 bamboo thatched tukuls (huts) that were really nice. They had western and Ethiopian food and it was a bit of an oasis in the middle of this country. At sunset they had a wonderful coffee ceremony where they roast their own coffee (they also grow the coffee), crush it, and boil it and serve it to the guests in tiny tea cups with fresh popcorn. It was incredible and it leaves Starbucks way behind. Then at around 6PM the Hyenas started to come out of their daytime homes and walked up the hills right near where we were having the coffee. At night there is an old man that walks around with a 10 foot spear apparently as the protection against the Hyenas. This lodge was pretty self contained and you could pick mangos, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, in addition to a pretty fancy vegetable garden that makes mine look pretty sad.
Awasa is located right near a lake that is teeming with birds, monkeys and other wildlife so we decided to rent a boat and we drove to the other side of the lake with our driver and all of a sudden we saw this extended family of Hippos. They were just lying around sunning themselves. It was pretty amazing to see their enormous size and watching them in the water. They have been there for hundreds if not thousands of years because there is no way these mammals could either enter or leave this area because of their size.
As we were heading into Addis for my solid week of consulting and training with NGO’s I started to think about the massive amounts of poverty and vulnerability of the population. I was reading a report from the USAID( United States Aid for International Development) that was saying that 75% of the population in Ethiopia makes less than $100 USD. per year . It was saying that Ethiopia, according to the human development index, is the poorest country on the planet. I feel totally overwhelmed and emotionally drained to think about how you create social change in this mass of humanity that has to spend almost every waking minute surviving. Every aspect of their lives impact each other so it is hard to look at educating kids without looking at their diet, health care, housing, etc. I am going to spend this whole week consulting and training with NGO’s working on these issues. Maybe they will have a partial answer. Maybe the answer is you pick one thing and you focus on that. Maybe you land at a spot and that is where you begin to make inroads one step at a time.
I talked with Dr. Rick Hodes tonight and he is responsible for taking care of the Jewish Falashas of which there are over 10,000 of them in Addis and a historic town called Gondor. On Sabbath he takes care of the Mother Teresa Orphanage kids and I am having Daniel spend the day with him. He also has adopted 8 Ethiopia boys and has another 6 living with him and Daniel will be helping them with their homework tomorrow.
Speaking about tomorrow, Yohannes and I have an appointment to meet with President Girmo who is the President of Ethiopia. Through Noel Cunningham’s contacts we managed to get this appointment and will be talking with him about presenting the book week (first week in April) awards.
The intensity of this country is the one word that keeps on coming up time and time again. Everything about this country (outside of the Oasis at the Lodge and the national park) is intense. Addis Ababa is the MOST INTENSE place I have ever been because there is no break (outside of the Sheridan and Hilton Hotels) from the crawling to survive; to the bleakness of the landscape; to the chaos of the streets. . There are no parks or green space and even the museums and the government offices and embassies look beaten and worn.
The Nobel peace prize this year went to a gentleman from Asia who has done some incredible work with micro-financing for women and it was the first time the award was given that tied poverty into peace. In most countries where there is extreme poverty it breeds the seeds of violence. However, Ethiopia is surely one of the poorest countries on the planet with over 40% of the people are Muslim and it is a country where people generally get along well and there does not seem to be major divisions between the tribes or the Muslims and Christians( even though I could certainly be wrong on this point). Why is this because in their neighboring country of South Africa there is tremendous violence in Johannesburg or in Nairobi, Kenya? A few people I have talked with feel that even though there are wealthy people in Addis, there are NO real wealthy or poor parts of these cities. Everyone seems to live next to each other and is dependent upon each other for their neighborhood or community.
I have to get up early tomorrow morning and have a busy day.
