Ethiopia Trip Update #3

Wow what a country of contrasts!!! For most of the time is all we see are dreary browns and battered landscape surrounded by sad looking faces of people designed to spend their life in poverty. Then the past couple of days we say a totally different side of life (for a few hours).

It started with Noel Cunningham, our wonderful friend who owns Strings Restaurant helped us set up an appointment with the President of Ethiopia, President Girma. So Yohannes and I put on a suit and tie and went to the presidential palace. We stopped at the gate and the guards checked to see if our name was on the register and then let us inside and proceeded to conduct this 20 minute security search of our ‘85 land cruiser including sweeping the bottom of the car with mirrors. We drove in and parked the car surrounded by beautiful manicured lawns and flower gardens. We walked into the palace and right when we entered there was a huge red rug with four Stars of David embroidered into the carpet. We walked to the President’s office and engraved into his big desk were two Stars of David. It is interesting to see the biblical connection this country has to Jewish people. We spent almost 90 minutes with this delightful man, who walks with a cane and appears to be about 80 years old but very smart and sharp. He served us coffee and tea with western style cookies and was extremely courteous and engaging. Once he found out that I worked with NGO’s he asked me to assist one of his favorite NGO’s that he founded a number of years ago. It is called LEM Ethiopia and it is an environmental organization designed to protect the forests and replant tree’s throughout the country that have been devastated because of the need for poor people for wood to cook their food and to sell for income. Yohannes invited the President ( and he accepted) to be the featured person at his book week event in Addis Ababa on April 1st.

Then that evening we went to the Sheraton Hotel that is a five star hotel costing almost $500 million and was built by one of the Omen Sheiks and one of the wealthiest people in this planet. This hotel was fabulous and is the party and “power place” for the ambassadors, diplomats, political officials and wealthy business people in the country. We walked behind the hotel and every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday at 7PM they have this incredible light show on their fountains timed to classical music. It was delightful seeing the flow of water shooting up in the air timed to the music with the different color lighting. We also met with Dr. Rick Hodes, the Jewish doctor that also takes care of the kids at Mother Teresa’s orphanage. Daniel had just spent part of the day with Rick and he was at the hotel attending part of a conference. The television show 60 minutes is meeting with Rick to do one of their 20 minute segments on this humanitarian. We are having Sabbath dinner with him and his 14 Ethiopian kids tomorrow evening.

This evening we went to a briefing at the American Embassy that was hosted by the U.S. Ambassador and his staff. There were probably 300 people and it was the first time we saw more than a dozen white people in the same place since arriving 10 days ago. The briefing was very professionally done and they gave the American citizens an update on the health and safety issues in the country. The Ambassador danced very lightly around the topic of Somalia and I was hoping for more detailed information. Apparently the Embassy is only warning people to be vigilant and not to travel to the Ethiopia/Somalia border. They have not identified any real terrorist threats within Addis and still feel that it is a safe place for American citizens. It was hard for me to get a real reading on the conflict and the Ambassador clearly did not want to talk about this issue in public. I must say that it was comforting being inside the American compound and the quarters had pretty lawns and flowers.

The past couple of days I have been consulting with NGO’s through my host organization and I finished the first day of my training session today. I have another 8 hours to go tomorrow. The room is packed with 40 participants from around the country in a pretty small space. . The groups I have been consulting with are mostly community development groups that are working in the northern and eastern rural highland parts of the country. These are areas of Ethiopia that are very high in elevation and dry with periodic drought that could starvetens of thousands of people. These locations are extremely poor areas and people have to live off the land that is essentially deserts and carry water 5-6 miles every day. A number of the groups are working on the AIDS/HIV issue that is a serious issue in this country (as it is in all of Africa) and the female circumcision issue. There is starting to be a stronger voice among Muslim women to fight this circumcision but breaking this culture and habit is very difficult. Most of these groups are indigenous NGO’s with small budgets ($50,000USD) but they have over 40 staff because of the extremely low salary structure and the costs of doing business. The International NGO’s, on the other hand are extremely well healed, with large budgets and there staff’s are paid wages usually in pounds or dollars. They are among the highest paid people in Ethiopia and everyone wants to work for the international NGO’s. It is the local and grassroots groups that I am concentrating on and they seem to have many of the same capacity building and infrastructure issues as smaller and rural groups have in the US.

Speaking of infrastructure it is extremely minimal and lacking in Ethiopia. This is a country that is not geared for tourists and the government has chosen not to put much money into being friendly to tourists and its citizens. There is only one internet provider and one cell phone provider. Both Daniel and I have cell phones and probably 50% of the time the service and networks for down. There is only one television station in the country that is controlled by the government as are the rest of the media. Daniel and Yohannes spent four hours today trying to send an attachment to our office in Denver with the pictures we took of the President and us. Outside of the few main roads of Addis Ababa ( a city of 5 million people) every road is dirt with big rocks embedded in the dirt and you have to hold on to the door handles otherwise you will get bounced all around .Only the large streets have names but 90% of the streets have no identification to tell what street you are on. You are constantly dodging not only kids and people but goats and cattle in all parts of the city.

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