Ethiopia 2008, Part 2

The drive back from Awassa to Addis Ababa took four hours. The most interesting things we saw were two truck loads of beautiful camels being driven to Djibouti. According to our driver, they were being sent by ship at Djibouti to one of the Middle East countries to be used for work or as food. We also passed a number of huge greenhouse operations, owned by the Israelis who have an extensive flower industry for the European market.

We are in the middle of the Ethiopian winter or the rainy season; summer is the dry season. In Addis, where the altitude is over 8,000 feet, most of the day is cloudy with intermittent rain. Many of the streets don’t have any pavement, and we are constantly maneuvering rocks and big stones, or trying to avoid huge pot holes every few yards. Traffic just zooms down the street with goats, sheep and occasionally cattle running into the road.

As soon as we drove into Addis, I began to cough again due to the diesel fumes bellowing from the cars and trucks. Addis has to be one of the most hectic, intense and interesting cities I have ever seen. In this country of 80 million people (the second largest in Africa) almost 90 percent of the population lives in the small towns and rural areas. Addis is alive with its more than five million people. One thing I noticed is that the rich and poor live in the same neighborhoods. This is different from most major cities in the world, where the population is segregated by wealth and class. This probably creates interesting phenomena because the tension between the Muslims and Christians (about evenly divided) is minimal. With both rich and poor living in the same space, both groups are dependent and interdependent upon each other.

I am in Ethiopia to work with nonprofit organizations (non-governmental organizations or NGOs) and I am concentrating on one of my favorites. Ethiopia Reads builds children’s libraries and publishes children’s stories in Amharic and other local languages. Last year when I was in Ethiopia, I worked with more than 40 NGOs that were concentrating on a variety of issues such as HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, clean water, rural community development, food and other relief services. The NGO sector is surprisingly large with more than 3,000 organizations registered with the Ethiopian government. My specific work is in the area of capacity building, organizational assessment, resource mobilization, fund raising, leadership development, and management support. I tend to concentrate on the indigenous groups that are not affiliated with the major NGOs such as Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, and Oxfam.

Most of the indigenous NGOs are small and are always struggling to cover their costs. The large international organizations have the majority of the resources and provide direct relief services. Their donations come mostly from European countries and sometimes from Embassy budgets. With the exception of a few foundations such as Packard and Clinton, the United States’ philanthropic presence is small. The major form of philanthropy in Addis seems to be giving one burr (10 burr to the dollar) or a small coin to people on the streets, usually the elderly, persons with disability and mothers carrying babies. (Abraham just handed out a burr to a mother and child on the way to the airport today.) There is no real organized philanthropy, and the neither the government nor companies provide any genuine help to NGO activities, except for some international corporations such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, Western Union and others that provide support through their international headquarters.

It is a real challenge running a nonprofit in Ethiopia because the infrastructure for the country is so basic and in some cases totally lacking. The literacy program I am working with has only one phone line—and probably 50 percent of the time the phone in not working. The Internet has the slowest dial tone and the entire day yesterday the Internet was down. It is impossible to download many documents or pictures because of the dial-up mode. The electricity works part of the time, but when you are working on a Word document on the computer and the electricity shuts off, you lose your information. When money gets wired to the national bank in Ethiopia from the United States, it takes a minimum of three weeks for the dollars to appear in the bank account. The import duties are so high that the price of office equipment, computers and other materials can be as much as twice what it is in the U.S.

The NGO community has been coming under attack by the government in the past few years for its human rights work. There is pending legislation that appears will be passed and signed into law by the end of 2008, stipulating that any NGO receiving 10 percent or more of its donations from international donors (which is almost every NGO in the country) cannot participate in human rights, civil society, democratic education or any activities against the government. This is a far-reaching effort to limit activities by NGOs that foster human rights and challenge the present administration. In many developing or third world countries it is the NGO sector that is the loudest voice for change, especially relating to human rights issues. Governments frequently want to control their activities.

Abraham and I have spent the past few days on holiday in the beautiful country and town of Lalibela. This town in the North of Ethiopia is the single biggest reason why tourists come to this country. Lalibela is the historic site of the best collection of stone churches in the world. We stayed at the Roha Hotel, a government owned facility, and it was the first place we’d been since we arrived in Ethiopia where there was actually warm water for a shower.

The country around Lalibela is stunning in its beauty and greenness. This part of Northern Ethiopia is beautiful with its lakes, mountains and greenness due to the rains. Driving from the airport to the hotel was one of the prettiest drives I have ever taken to any airport in the world. All the way along this 28 kilometer drive into town, lush green fields were terraced to the tops of the hills with barley, teff (the basic ingredient in Injera bread), corn, and beans. The beauty of the country is stunning.

From the moment we arrived, we were inundated with tour guides wanting to sell us tour packages for everything from a car tour to a rural monastery, walking tours around the city, or site seeing at the historic churches. For two days it was a constant struggle with everyone wanting burr (money). Every time we walked out of the hotel we were bombarded with young children in white gowns signing to us for burr. Every stand we passed, people shouted to us to “come in Mister and see what we have.” Young men tried to engage us in conversation: “Are you from America, Mister?” and “What is your name?” I told one of the boys that my name was Richard and for the next two days, everywhere I walked people shouted out “Mr. Richard” when they saw me.

The volcanic stone churches were incredible. King Lalibela wanted to replicate the experience of Christ in Jerusalem, including the Jordon River, Christ’s birthplace, and the history of early Christianity. So, in the 11th century, he got 40,000 men and they built theses unbelievable churches out of volcanic stone to duplicate the Jerusalem experience. It took these men 25 years to build 12 or 13 of these churches; it is remarkable to think that they carved these intricate buildings out of rock without any machinery.

On the plane, we met some Ethiopian Jews who immigrated to Israel during the famous Airlift Moses in 1990. There were two sisters and a brother who were raised in Barhar Dar, one of the regional capitals in Northern Ethiopia. Along with them was this retired physician from Israel who was an adventurous type. One of the sisters was a nurse and when she told him she was going to Ethiopia to visit her mother and family, he asked her if he could tag along. Since Abraham speaks Hebrew fluently he struck up a conversation right away on the plane and for the whole time Abraham was chatting away in Hebrew with the sisters and the doctor.

It is very special to see how easily Abraham engages people and makes friends. He is so very respectful of the many different people we have met during the past few weeks. He is a tremendous traveling companion and I was so proud of him. When we arrived in Addis the first day Abraham immediately went over to the kids and introduced himself and started to read stories to them. When we walked from the street to the library compound, kids ran out and started yelling “Abreheim.” Yohannes has had this Toyota Land Cruiser for three years and has been unable to figure out how to use the radio in the car. Within two minutes Abraham had the radio working. When Abraham visited the national museum at Addis Ababa University, he met this young woman who will graduate soon as a teacher, and he invited her to lunch. She calls now on the cell phone wanting to talk with “Abe,” and we will be seeing her before we leave tomorrow. I am so very pleased that he is with me.

We are at the Lalibela airport now waiting for the plane to take us back to Addis where Yohannes will pick us up. We will go out to dinner with him and then return to his house. I am flying out to Washington D.C. (via Rome) tomorrow late evening. It has been another tremendous experience in this African country. I leave with sadness for the extreme poverty and poor living conditions of so many of the people, and the uncertain hope in the future for so many of the children. I am saddened that with the tremendous richness of the land, the history of the people and the great spirit I have seen and experienced, that this country is not further along. President Clinton was visiting Ethiopia two weeks ago with his daughter Chelsea and he promised people he would do more to help set up health clinics. This is certainly a noble and needed activity. Relief is needed to allow these special people to have a chance to look at tomorrow, but tomorrow needs to start today. We need to find a way to provide not only relief, but also long term development, education, and political reform that will allow the millions of Ethiopians to look to the future with hope and optimism.