This report has been writen by CFGB Food Study Tour participant Susan Smith of Cargill of her recent experience. She is pictured here with a ladies group she met with while on her trip.
The last week of January 2011 marked an important milestone in the global perspective of my life. This was when I departed Washington D.C. with ten fellow travellers from all across Canada on a flight to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. We were on a Canadian Foodgrains Bank Food Study Tour to Ethiopia, the cradle of humanity, so called because the earliest human remains ever found are there in The Great Rift Valley. Now, the country has a population of eighty-four million and with that comes the enormous problem of how to provide sustainable food security, when the majority of the people are subsistence farmers subject to lack of rainfall, pests and diseases in order to survive.
There is virtually no infrastructure, which means that the people have to walk miles and miles to the nearest market. There is no problem with obesity in Ethiopia! The roads are full of people walking with burdens on their backs, beside donkeys, goats, sheep, oxen, cows and camels. If you get out of a vehicle in the middle of nowhere you are immediately surrounded by people—it’s as if the bushes have eyes!
Most of the country is mountainous and the landscape has been denuded of trees over the centuries to provide necessary fuel for cooking. This causes increased soil-moisture loss and erosion. Canadian Foodgrains Bank works with various partners in Ethiopia to help provide sustainable food security in many areas by initiating Food for Work Programs such as irrigation projects, nursery stock, livestock services, soil and water conservation, women’s self-help and income generation groups, emergency relief programs, as well as support for HIV Aids awareness and family planning information.
The Kale Heywet Church is a partner of CFGB working with the Terepezza Development Association in the Sodo area, which is in the south-west of the country. They now grow sorghum, maize, mango, citrus, apple, avocado, vegetables, spices, coffee, sweet potatoes, taro, cassava etc. The women’s groups have goat programs and poultry projects. On our visit to this project we talked to a model farmer, selected for his ability, who now has forty seven traditional and twenty one modern beehives. His biggest problem is the chemical pesticides used on surrounding crops but he has a net increase in income of 5000 Birr which translates into $300 per annum. He has trained over twenty other bee keepers to date, each having two modern and two traditional hives, one being supplied by CFGB and the other by the government. From there we headed up the mountain, 2000m above sea-level, where the area was barren and soil-erosion severe but because of a CFGB Food for Work program which included stone terraces and tree planting, the land can now be used for crop production. They did twelve projects a year for three years and would like to do fifty more to correct the problem.
In the same area Women’s Self-Help groups were established four years ago, there are fifteen groups each having one supervisor. One of the women, Aykale Nago told us (through an interpreter) that she has nineteen people in her group and they started saving 25 cents each per week. The idea of saving was new to them and she said that at first people laughed at them and called them foolish but now they have 5037 Birr or $315 and no-one’s laughing anymore! The money helps members in times of sickness, house damage, etc and they loan with no interest whereas before they had to go to money lenders who charged high interest. Another participant, Alabo Agago, told us “Usually when we see white people we run away and hide but you have come to meet with us and we are very encouraged.” Zasa Falek said, “Your visits are very important to us and we need your support, please don’t forget us.”
The education and income generation empowerment of women is undoubtedly one of the main keys to solving the poverty and malnutrition problems that we witnessed in Ethiopia. In the current culture they are second class citizens but the church is teaching equality with men and giving them the knowledge and confidence to step out onto the path of long-term, self-sufficient sustainability.
On our next visit, Ephraim from the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church, a partner with the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada, took us over very rough terrain to a water diversion irrigation scheme which was mostly destroyed by heavy rains in the brief rainy season last July. Part of it is still functioning and they are harvesting three season’s crops as opposed to one, growing maize, vegetables and bananas. Two hundred and sixty five households are beneficiaries with 0.25 hectare of land each. While we were there many farmers came streaming over the fields, with primitive tools in their hands, to greet us. One of the farmers, Aberta Kobota, told us, “When Canadian Foodgrains Bank began work here, it was like a desert, we didn’t think this land could ever be workable. We were in tears when the weir broke because we had all worked so hard. The church didn’t leave us but came and supported us. We are blessed because we have communications together. If the donors support us again we are in hope. I beg you from abroad. On behalf of the entire community I bless them and may God bless them richly.”
The highlight of my trip was a home-stay in a mud hut with a thatched roof owned by a young farming family, Bergene, Sara and their two small children. They treated the two of us like royalty, giving us their bed and the only two wooden chairs they possessed with backs on. The bathroom was a few sticks surrounding a dug-out in the ground with poles laid across it, you just had to aim and fire! Supper was partially ground maize corn mixed with buttermilk, popcorn cooked over a fire and thick black coffee. During the evening the whole neighbourhood came to greet the farenji (white people), we were quite the novelty act. Before we went to bed they washed our feet, an act I found very touching. I will always have a place in my heart for those warm, wonderful people, so simple yet so profound.
We graduated to a mud house for our second home-stay and the bedroom walls were decorated with large spiders which our host graciously disposed of with a machete. We were very fortunate with our accommodations as one lady in our group had rats running over her bed and one poor guy was covered with bed bug bites.
We flew to Lalibela and had a brief touristy respite visiting the Monolithic Stone Churches which were hewn out of solid rock, starting in the twelfth century. There are eleven amazingly created and beautifully carved churches which took three hundred years to complete and belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
From there we headed north east to the Afar region, a semi-desert, home to nomadic tribes. We stayed at the Support for Sustainable Development Camp which, in partnership with the Canadian Lutheran World Relief, runs twelve projects benefitting six hundred families. The herds of the nomads were reduced by drought but because of the irrigation projects introduced, they have diversified and can grow sustainable crops such as maize, peppers, onions, tomatoes and fruits. Now the children can attend school and they have a water well and a health clinic. This is predominantly a Muslim area and one man can have up to four wives and thirty children. As only men had been coming out to greet us at this point, the women in our group specifically asked to speak with a group of local women, who ushered us behind one of the village compound buildings. They told us they needed a grinding machine for their grain as at present they walked ten kilometres to use the nearest one and they also needed a water well in their village. Then, asking us not to tell the men, they expressed very strong views against the practise of female circumcision, only twelve women in the area are not circumcised. After removal of the clitoris they are sewn up so small that it is very difficult to give birth in later life and many bleed to death.
On our return to Addis Ababa we spent a day on visits to the offices of the UN World Food Program, the Biodiversity Institute (a seed bank), the Ethiopian Government Disaster Management and Food Security Sector, and CIDA at the Canadian Embassy where we met the Canadian Ambassador, Michelle Levesque.
Ethiopia is a wonderfully beautiful country which boasts thirteen months of sunshine and equally wonderful, friendly people. It was the PERSONAL contact on an equal basis (not we are the ‘haves’ and they are the ‘have nots’) that meant so much to me on this trip. In many places they just kept hugging us and wouldn’t let us go! They have permeated my soul and added another dimension to my life, truly they are our sisters and brothers.
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is making a huge difference in so many of their lives by helping them to sustain themselves with the basic necessities of life. I came home with a piece of my heart still in Ethiopia and feeling very proud to be Canadian, from a country that helps people to help themselves. Everyone deserves Food Justice.
I have shared my experience with you in the hope of promoting more global understanding.
What we can do to help:
1. Learn more about Food Justice by reading, workshops, internet.
2. Advocacy—communicating with government policy makers to make Food Insecurity unacceptable.
3. Financial support.
4. Pray.
5. Consumer choices such as buying Fair Trade commodities.
We can all do something!
No comments:
Post a Comment