ETHIOPIA – WEEK 2 – KOCHORE / ARBA MINCH / CHENCA / SHASHEMENE

Day 8– 2nd July

Got up at 6:15 and we again left at 7am. There was an electricity blackout, so no power, and torrential rains. We arrived in Dilla a small village about 480 km south-west of Addis a little after 10am and stopped for breakfast. This time the "bathrooms" were unusable – that was at least true for the ladies in our team as they told me – Katherine said: “When you can't walk up the stairs to the bathroom without gagging and your feet are squelching in the sodden mat on the floor, it is not a good sign.” So Tesfeye drove them up to a pension where apparently the squelching still occurred but the gagging was minimized.

We arrived at the Kochore ADP around 11am and were very impressed by the lushness of the vegetation and friendliness of the people. The ADP manager by the name of Grima spent several hours with us explaining the history of the coffee cooperatives and the current struggles they face. Especially a lack of appropriate market access and obsolete machinery are apparently the main issues of these co-operatives.

We then started our short trip to the coffee processing area and when I sat in the Landcruiser (the 3 other farenjis were in the second car) and started to talk I realised that all other passengers were bowing their heads and were quiet. I then asked Grima what that meant and he explained that they were praying for a safe journey before starting it – he called it ‘one for the road’ and told me that a couple of years before these words had a different meaning to him….

At the coffee processing area we learned, that last year they managed to process about 200,000 kg of coffee. They have enough beans to produce 1 million kg but don't have sufficient machinery nor capital to process it! That is exactly part of our mission to help with this issue.

The trip back to the ADP center was an amazing experience. This is, apparently, the densest area in all of Africa (430 people per km2) and, as we drove by, the children and the families came pouring out of their houses to smile wave and yell ("you, you, you") to us. To see these incredibly poor children with rags for clothes, no shoes, and mud huts for houses, to be so joyous in greeting us (and expecting nothing than a smile in return) was touching beyond belief.

Girma told us how he had left his wife and 3 children under 12 living in Addis while he worked on the ADP. He explained how he thought that the experience was "transforming" him and how all these children in the ADP (5000+) were "his children too". The way he explained this was incredibly sincere and very touching. So often we think of "our family" or "their family" but rarely that their family is our family too. I am struggling with my view of whether it is more right to leave your "own" family to serve "another" but it is something for me to think about.

Dinner tonight was at the ADP. They shared so openly with us it was embarrassing. Sharing in this sense includes also eating from the same plate and I get more and more used to it. Belay always wants to give us the best of the food which I very much appreciate

Our hotel is interesting. Belay presented us with our choice of bedrooms. My pick was based on the one that had a light in the bathroom. The bedrooms were across the way from the "disco" with an assortment of locals in non-local dress. The disco closed at midnight – please note it happens all on a Monday.


Day 9– 3rd July

We returned to the Kochore ADP this morning this finish up our field work there. If my goal on this trip was to learn about the local culture, people and at the same time enjoying the journey then Ethiopia and its people are doing their best to help me. Each meal is at a minimum of an hour and a half. It is a continuous negotiation process with people offering food from their plate and then insisting that you take more food from the serving dishes the minute your plate even begins to look diminished. The food at the ADP’s is very simple and based primarily on local produce. Breakfast is scrambled eggs and bread (often from the day before). Coke is served at every meal. Coffee is often not served until the end. TV is usually on at full volume and thus meal time is a strange combination of socializing and staring at the TV. This morning we did not get out of breakfast until after 10am, by which time we were all anxious to get to work.

We spent the morning sharing the information gathered from the last few days, typing up notes and brainstorming. Less than an hour into it, concerned Ethiopian heads poked around the door asking if we were doing OK and could they bring in coffee. Another hour later and we had to go to lunch and an hour and after later we were back at work. Shortly thereafter we needed to leave to get on the road. It is hard to work hard here. And it is hard to work hard at not working hard. Clear….?

Every time we entered or departed the ADP children would line up at the fences smiling, waving and shouting "you, you, you". Based on their reactions to us, it was clear that we, the farenji, are extreme rarities. According to the ADP manager, typically only one or two white people visit here a year. One of the strict rules at World Vision is that you are not allowed to speak directly with the children or touch them without direct permission. We got permission to at least take a few photographs….

On the way to our stop for the night we stopped at one of the children selling pineapple. Within heartbeats the car was surrounded by children all with pineapple to sell. Belay and Tesfeye rolled down the windows to negotiate on the quality of the produce and the price. Discussions got quite heated and I think for the first time we saw angry words and gestures exchanged between Ethiopian people. Belay, Tesfeye and Samson all got out of the car and calmed things down. We drove further down the road and stopped by some girls: the energy level of the sellers was the same but with less aggression. We purchased our pineapples, about $1 for a bunch of 6. Using my trusty knife, Tesfeye sliced up the pineapples. We were attracting a growing crowd of children and Belay asked one of them to go and get a knife for themselves and he gave one of the pineapples. Soon we were all eating pineapple, passing on the extra pieces, that Belay and Samson were insisting we eat, to the children next to us, and making great play of throwing the skin into the trees next to us. Smiles abounded.

On our way to Shona we also overtook a truck with camels – that was after Beijing and the camel at the great wall the second time I saw camels in an unexpected place – on a truck…

After four hours of travelling down bumpy, winding roads we arrived at the Shona ADP where we were to stay the night. Samson told us that Belay was actually the ADP manager there for three years until last November; it was clear that Belay was very proud to show us ‘his’ ADP - at 15 years one of the oldest ADP’s in Ethiopia.

When we arrived at the ADP gates we saw a crowd gathered around what looked like grain sacks. They moved out of the way so we could drive through and Belay leapt out of the car to be embraced by the hugs of his ADP colleagues. Once we arrived at the ADP’s main room the agricultural head told us, that they had hosted an HIV/AIDS training session that night and that the food was given out later for the afflicted and their families.

One of the biggest issues facing the Shona ADP is polygamy. Most families have only 0.5 hectare to farm on. Many of the Muslim families here have one husband and four or five wives and an exponential number of children. This poses obvious challenges in terms on generating sufficient food for the family, not even to speak of the HIV horror. While World Vision professes to not to try to convert people to Christianity, they do want to improve the quality of lives in their areas and regard polygamy as a key issue.

The ADP people again very generously shared their dinner with us and then showed us our rooms. Only one bedroom had a bathroom attached (actually Belay's old room) and the others had access to an external combined bathroom and toilet. The photos only tell half the story of the senses that were challenged…


Day 10– 4th July

This morning we set off for Arba Minch located in south western Ethiopia. The roads pass through some of the most fertile land in Ethiopia and were jammed with people offering their produce for sale (pineapple, mango, bananas, lemons, potato) or herding their goats, sheep and cows. A few people were riding bikes; bikes are required to be registered and each carries a license plate with a 30 Birrr a year license fee. Belay explained that the license system is partly to stop theft and partly to generate revenue. A bike costs approximately 800 Birrr (a donkey or horse can cost around 1000-1200 Birrr) - this is clearly a lot of money for people, many of who earn only 1 Birrr a day.

The roads were really rough and it was very wet. Many of the people walking along the side of the road were using enset banana leaves as umbrellas. We passed through many rain sodden areas including a very muddy water fall flowing freely into the banana plantations.

Our hotel in Arba Minch is very pleasant (read: clean toilets) and we would be happy to stay here a few days. We went to lunch at a "café" (another hour and a half affair) and at the end Katherine and I asked if we could go back to the hotel (and catch up on things like writing this blog) while the others went for coffee at another place. Every time I have suggested walking so far I have been met with strong resistance. I think Belay partly is concerned for our safety and partly thinks walking or exercise is a little crazy. We agreed that Tesfeye would drive Katherine and me back to the hotel and the others would wait to be taken to coffee and later be picked up by Tesfeye. Katherine and I got in the car and quickly realized Tesfeye was taking us a different way, although he assured us this was the way to the hotel. When we arrived, it was clear that Tesfeye thought we did not want to walk but wanted to be driven to the coffee place. It was quite funny that Katherine and I were the only ones that wanted to get moving and not to sit around again having coffee and yet we were the ones delivered most expediently to the coffee place! The view from the coffee place (another hotel) however, was amazing. On one side is a fresh water lake, in the middle a piece of land called Bridge of the Gods (where some native Ethiopian tribes live including the ones who grow plates/rings into their lips) and on the other a salt water lake flowing from the ocean. It was truly beautiful and so perhaps there was motive or blessing in the mistaken kidnapping of us to have coffee there.


Day 11– 5th July

After a healthy breakfast we set out for the ADP in Chenca – what I did not take into account was the altitude of that ADP – almost 3,000m above sea level and I only read during our drive the World Vision yearly plan for this ADP where the environment is extensively described as it plays a major role in the thought and decision process of World Vision. This paper then informed me that temperature around 1 C are common the average is 8 C and the highest is approx.14 C during the whole year. As said I had not taken that into account and hence I was only wearing a t-shirt with long sleeves and had a rain coat with me – it proved not to be enough….

It was an hour and a half ride up through a muddy, winding road. There were many, many women trudging on foot up the road, carrying huge bundles of branches on their backs. At times the car got seriously off track and Tesfeye did a fine job getting us up the mountain. I have to confess that the Toyota was the appropriate car and my Skoda Octavia would have not survived in this area …

We were friendly welcomed and after a first introduction by the ADP manager Lemmo to the projects of this ADP went to see an apple tree nursery run by World Vision. This ADP has been officially in existence since 1996 but is in one of the most difficult areas of Ethiopia – as the topography does not allow for many other agricultural products about 10 years ago a German called Ralph Wiegand who set out after his agricultural studies in Germany to this country together with his wife Development helped this community to establish a co-operative and showed them how to grow this highland fruit ; impressive what we saw and learned at this place how this organisation helps the people and the community to find a sustainable solution for the future of the people there.

We also met with the "secretary" of the Highland ADP apple cooperative. We arrived in an entry area that was at least a foot deep in mud. After our driver backed up several times to try and find a place where we could potentially get out relatively mud free we gave up. We walked through a couple of buildings and slip slided through the mud to finally end up in the Secretary's office. It consisted of a desk, a red phone connected by a very obvious phone wire dangling form the ceiling, a book case with several obviously important files and a plastic tarpaulin spread on the back floor that clearly was the repository for the source documents. The secretary was clearly very knowledgeable about his business, the environment and the market forces facing him and his cooperative. We somewhat struggle with our relevance in this.

We had another site scheduled but as we spent several hours too long at the apple coop we did not get to the weaving site

On the way back we passed through Dorza. Several 4WD were parked out front and Belay ascertained that it was therefore of some ‘farenji’ importance and so we stopped. As it turned out it was quite interesting with a traditional Dorza house in the shape of an elephant to memorialize the elephants which were lost to Kenya or the Omo valley.

At Belay's urging and Tesfeye's silent pleading we got in the car to head back down the mountain and began to drive through groups of children doing the "dance". Individually or alone they were standing in the middle of the road and upon sight of a car, starting to swing their hips and butts to the sound of their own drums. We watched them and their happy dance and I must say i was quite an experience.

We arrived in Arba Minch and stayed at the same hotel as the night before and were quite happy as there was some even warm water and a relatively clean bathroom…


Day 12– 6th July

We were meeting at 8am today and I believe I soon have to start to do some exercise to keep some sort of balance with the long, long meals and many hours in the car travelling each day. In addition, we are without power again. The next challenge of the day was that Anne-Sophie believed she had lost her bag containing her passport, credit cards and money. The last time she remembered seeing it was on the dinner table last night in the garden area of the hotel. There was much frenetic searching and running around by distressed hotel staff when after a tense 45 minutes she found it at the bottom of her backpack. What a relief! For everyone! It is tough to keep track of everything when we are moving places every day.

I then called Ralph Wiegand, (the guy who’s name was mentioned yesterday who helped the Chenca co-op and who still lived in the area) and asked if we could stop by. I talked to his wife Monika and she offered to come although they had only arrived from a weeks traveling the night before. We spent a very interesting few hours with him and his wife talking about their work here and their view of Ethiopia and business development. They came here together with a Christian organization from Germany straight out of college after studying agricultural science. Now 12 years later with 3 children, they have made their home here in Arba Minch and spend their time trying to improve the opportunities available to the local people. They were quite inspiring. Their point of view is a little different from World Visions in terms of how to help people out of poverty and perhaps more western focused on the psychology of motivation. One of the important issues the raised was the current market distortions occurring at the nursery level at the ADP. The ADP sells the baby seedlings to the farmers at 6 Birr. The idea is that the farmers hold the seedlings and once they have grown they sell them back to the cooperative at 40 Birr. The cooperative then resells at 43 Birr. The problem is that many of the farmers buy at 6 and immediately resell at 40, creating a market distortion and contributing to the problem of getting the farmers motivated to create sustainable value.

Later we stopped at a Crocodile farm. It was a man made thing and not too inspiring and actually sad to see these concrete enclosures (which look like empty swimming pools) filled with baby crocodiles and larger ones as well.

Running quite behind schedule now, we set off at 1.30 for Shashemene which would be our stop for the evening. After stopping for lunch at 4.30pm for one hour, we arrived at about 8pm at the "Majestic Rift Valley Hotel". Shashemene is the home of Haile Selassie and the Rastafarian capital. At Ethiopian millennium (11 September 2007) there are approx 30 000 Jamaicans expected to come to this place and actually was expecting to see Rasta's everywhere and reggae music to be blasting from the street corners. But no, it was actually very much like the other towns we have seen. We spotted one set of dreadlocks in the hotel restaurant and that was it.


Day 13– 7th July

This Saturday morning we started out in Awassa at the lake where Belay took us to see the local fishermen bringing in their catch. Dozens of boats were pulled up to the shore with young boys unloading the catch and unraveling the nets. The "beach" was covered in guts and gore and you can imagine the intoxicating aroma. As soon as the locals spotted the farenji we were accosting by boys pointing to the huge and quite unattractive Birds (which I believe were Maribu) and the Pelicans and throwing fish at them. The idea is that we would watch the fish eating and then pay the boys for the entertainment. We had soon had our fill although I am sure the Birds had not. We then took a little cruise on Lake Awassa and enjoyed the morning.

We then worked ….and met with the Awassa Program Office deputy manager for a few hours to talk about the business and marketing activities of the Awassa area and their 13 ADP’s. It is clear that this is a very new area for them and they are just getting their arms around what is currently happening on that front. There is a huge variety of products currently being produced in the area and for the first time the government is focused on helping the local communities determine how to market their products. They actually place television advertisements stating the current prices of various products like potato, carrot, tef, apples etc. to help people determine how much to buy/sell for. The prices are suggested but not mandated.

Notwithstanding this, there is very little other assistance being provided and the ADP's have a huge burden ahead of them to get this right. The cultural issues associated with driving an attitudinal change in the local people can't be underestimated and one of our challenges will be to help them figure out ways to do this. Ethiopian business hours include Saturdays and on some cases Sundays and so it was nothing unusual for them to be in the office on Saturday. The office is a two year old building that looks like a left over from Russia 50 years ago. Nothing is "finished"; there is concrete dust all over and due to the quality of the building products as well as the poor workmanship everything is falling apart already.
After lunch we visited some hot springs outside of Shashemene and enjoyed a "shower" in the very hot water. The source further up the mountain is apparently 85 Celsius….


Day 14– 8th July A Sunday and a travel day today - from Shashemene back to Addis Ababa. 250km through relatively clear roads; a mere 5 hours, with a 30 minute coffee break. We arrived back at the Hotel Leopol which we knew from our first stay in Addis. The same hotel but i looks positively exquisite and very luxurious after our first week in the field. We spent the afternoon at the Hilton business centre working on our notes from the field and our blogs. As you can see I was somewhat successful After finishing up at the business centre we went to the bar to watch the Wimbledon Cup final (Federer/Nadal). I know we could have been anywhere in the world but Addis, except for the fact that we had a Ethiopian beer and for the lady of the night next to us attempting to entice me... We finished up with a "team" discussion over pizza and went "home" for a good night's sleep.

more photos are available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Guenter.Blog/ETHIOPIAWEEK2KOCHOREARBAMINCHCHENCASHASHEMENE