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It's a road Jim
But not as we know it...We're back!
Our holiday with Dee & Dave in Addis, Awassa, Wondo Genet, Arba Minch, Konso, Addis (again) and Wenchi Crater is finished; but what a holiday it was 😊
The trip reaffirmed to us (and confirmed for Dee and Dave) how wrong the western perception of Ethiopia is.
It really is NOT some arid desert full of animal carcasses and fly-covered children. It has mountains, lakes, grasslands, forests, scrub plains. Jungles as well as deserts. It has rivers, gorges, hot springs.
Because of it's isolation from foreign influences - it was never colonised properly, though the Italians did try - and because of Live Aid and then ongoing TV shows like Comic Relief, the only images westerners seem to have are the stereotypical ones.
Arba Minch is one of the most beautiful locations I have ever visited. EVER. EVER. EVER.
And then Wenchi Crater came along and it was like we had walked into the Garden of Eden.
If you have been following the blog you will know from the pictures already but, even so, we did not expect to visit such amazing places.
That said, I have a couple of saved
Fasiko Village
Greeting the Ferengis blogs to post before I get to the holiday, plus I need to sort out the decent pics from the ones of my feet and the roof of the car (taken while bumping up rocky paths in a 4x4).
Besides, I hope Dave & Dee will email me at least one more guest entry; and as guests I ought to let them go first.
Tonight is Man United vs Arsenal in the Semi-final of the Champions League so rather than watch it with the rest of Assosa I will sit here and finish a saved entry. I will know when anyone scores as a huge cheer will echo across the town, though I'll have to logon to find out who has scored! Maybe I'll see if it is being broadcast on the world service?
Mulatu asked if I would watch the match as I have started watching Arsenal again in DSTV bars and hotels, but I'm afraid this is too big a game to be surrounded by squawking teenage Man U fans 😉
I'm also feeling a bit tired as last night was St Mariam's day and our chums at St Mariam's church started up on
The workshop
The Malawian Delegation get the low down the mike about 3am and kept going all day.
At one point in my pre-dawn delerium I was convinced they were singing some Ethiopian version of "there's a hole in my bucket" followed by "old Mac Donald had a farm"?!?
By the afternoon the priest had lapsed into a kind of soporific wailing that would have had an army of extras from a George Romero zombie-flick lumbering across to lend moral support...
Don't forget your camera So
() during the last long bank-holiday weekend in March we were invited by our friendly driver Argenyo to join him on a car journey to Fasiko Kebele on the road towards Menge Woreda (and Sudan).
Always willing to take a look at some new village, we agreed
().
It transpired that Argenyo actually wanted our camera to go along with us as he needed photographic evidence that some materials supplied as part of an Indian development project had actually reached their intended destination - Faskio village - not some unintended destination -
Barefoot Women Engineers
The Ethiopian Engineers and their locations like Argenyo's garden shed.
Not quite sure what to expect we waited for our role call at 8am when Argenyo and our chariot would arrive.
The Malawian Delegation As is usual, we climbed into the car and instead of heading off to our destination a slow trundle around Assosa began as Argenyo shouted down his mobile at parties unknown.
First we went off to the Bamboo Paradise hotel.
Then left it.
Then we went back again.
This time in got 4 African women and an African man - who we discovered (when they failed to understand Amharic) - were from Malawi.
Next up we collected Teddy.
Then an Ethiopian guy we had never met before.
Then Bekema.
Then we stopped for breakfast.
If you show us yours... Stuffed with sambusas we set off up the road to Menge, past the Management Institute and headed into the great unknown.
As we travelled it became clear that the Malawi delegation were on a fact-finding mission (aka "jolly").
These missions are common place as part of development projects world-wide and usually involve trips overseas on good western daily
The Engineers
Er. Yes, one's a man and they both have shoes on.. allowances. Sometimes these trips are thrown into a development proposal to sweeten up the key members of any committee prior to accepting a proposal.
Often they are chucked in so both parties that are spending the development grant benefit.
An example would be, lets say, a Dutch organisation flying key Ethiopian staff to Europe on an "exposure visit" so they can visit various important sites (shopping malls) with their 100 euro/day allowance and in return the Dutch staff get wined and dined on a tour around, say, every Ethiopian university.
Once everyone has "exposed" themselves to the full the real work starts e.g. building wells in a remote corner of Ethiopia so women do not have to walk 20km with a jerry can to collect water every day.
Of course there will not have been any "exposure visits" to the site of the actual work. Naturally. There's no hotels or, er, running water... 😉
To be fair, the workers do sometimes benefit from these jollies, though these poor Malawians were hardly getting the 5-star treatment. One had had a stroke in Addis airport, so two of her colleagues had to stay and look after her
Solar Installation
Circa 2006. And still working! in a hospital in Addis!
And the Bamboo Paradise, Assosa, is hardly the Addis Sheraton.
To cap it all, instead of a carpeted and air-conditioned Cobra, the party were getting bounced around in the back of Argenyo's aging and long wheel base with a breakfast of deep-fried lentil sambusas.
The Project It seems we were off to look at a solar power project.
Now this was interesting. I am always amazed that Ethiopia does not take advantage of it's self-proclaimed '13 months of sunshine'. Why burn imported oil, coal or petrol when you can use the power of the sun?
Granted that Ethiopia generates a lot of power from hydro-electric dams, but given that we are always suffering from power cuts during the dry season, why not use solar? Plus hydro-electric dams often damage ecosystems around the site of the dammed river.
You will see some solar panels installed, but these are mostly to power the satellite dishes and links that Ethiopia Telecom uses to beam phone calls around from remote corners of Ethiopia. The only other panels I have seen are for powering School Net - another satellite communications systems for schools
Your man and a roof panel
Keep up the good work, fella to receive video lessons from a central hub.
I suspect the power corporation here is not keen on punters generating their own electricity supply and bypassing their monopoly. Consequently solar power equipment is also heavily taxed and highly expensive. But then there must be some way of adding meters to any solar solution and making a profit?
And speaking to guys who have worked elsewhere in Africa, solar energy has been embraced, where possible, in other countries across the continent.
Hold on to yer hat Argenyo rocks the wheel to the right and we are suddenly off-road and bouncing along towards (we think) Fasiko village.
Just to make sure we pick up a local lad who gives us directions.
After a 30 minute on-road (but feeling decidely off-road) bounce and dust-a-thon we roll into a very clean and well kept village (we find muslims seem to keep their compounds incredibly clean).
Fasiko is populated by Berta people - who are the indiginous ethnic group in the Assosa Zone of Beneshangul-Gumuz.
The Berta are relatively recent converts to Islam but some bear the scars of clan markings - deep facial cuts - unique
to each clan - made to the men to identify friend or foe when in battle. Along with other forms of marking - such as the home made crucifix tatoos (amongst Christians, of course) that girls sometimes have across their foreheads - the practice is fading away as old traditions slowly die out.
We are greeted by a few kids who run off to find the village elders and the (barefoot) solar engineers.
After shaking hands with everyone we all pose for a group photo before being led into a workshop full of solar power generating paraphenalia.
Around the walls are information boards and photographs and suddenly it all makes sense.
The Barefoot Women Engineers of Ethiopia The project is sponsored by a University in India and takes women from remote villages and trains them to install and maintain a solar energy source to provide power for their village.
Four villages in Ethiopia have benefitted from this project and Fasiko was selected in 2006 as the project location for Beneshangul-Gumuz.
Two people have been trained to install and support the solar generation and the Indian project has supplied the equipment. The Malawi women
...but batteries are
Any chance of plugging my mobile in? are visiting as part of their exposure visit before being whisked off to India for the actual training.
It all seems an eminently worthwhile project!
We spoke to the man and the woman who run the project in Fasiko (via an interpreter) and found out the village is very pleased with the power.
The solar panels supply one light for around 100 homes, who each pay 5 birr/month. Of the 500 birr that is collected (about $50), 150 birr goes to each of the "engineers" and the remaining 200 goes towards village funds.
The Malawi contingent looked on interestedly and the Malawian man (who seemed to be the spokesman for the delegation) asked some pertinent questions.
A panel and a battery supplies a light for 4 homes and a bunch of smaller panels charges up hand-held lanterns that can be used where there is no fixed lighting.
Yes there have been problems. During a storm lightning struck one panel so 4 homes are without power and the engineers have no means to replace the damaged panels (being expensive and hard to find; plus they have no transport to get 800km to Addis).
The
The Three Lamps
Enough light for a night in with Suduko inquiry kind of opened a floodgate and the engineers rolled off a list of problems that they were hoping for help with.
As expected, 150 birr was not enough for the engineers.
To be fair, 150 in a remote village per month is not bad for a top-up job, but the woman said her husband died recently and she was left with 2 kids to bring up with no other job.
The other engineer did not state his situation, but if this is his main occupation 150 birr is not great for an adult supporting a family (we earn 2,100 birr a month each which is an OK government salary. One counterpart is government employed and is a single man of 26 on 1,100 birr.
The other is a UN Volunteer - a single man in his 30's and he earns 6,000 birr/month).
They wanted more money.
Plus they had a problem that the spare parts were running out, as was the acid used to fill the batteries. They had no money to buy the spares or the battery acid.
The Malawi guy was very good. He asked them what the 200 birr/month
Workshop spares
Boxes more empty than full, unfortunately for the Kebele money was being used for? Could they not increase the 5 birr/month? If the rest of the village wanted a light (they certainly did said the engineers) then would they not have a whip-round to invest in additional solar panels?
The big problem with any developmental effort is the magic word of sustainability. Is it sustainable?
VSOs are always trying to make their efforts sustainable. If I install a local area network, will it fall apart when I leave because no one has the skills or initiative to support it? If I write a project plan and leave, will it be followed? If we install solar panels and come up with a charging mechanism will it be self-financing in one/two/three years and so on?
"One birr. Give me one birr..." One big problem I have with "aid" and the developing world is that in many cases it is not sustainable. You give people money and when it runs out they need more. You create a cuture reliant on handouts; and this culture extends to individuals. We have a problem; lets ask the foreigner who gave us the money/training/equipment to fix it.
OK,
Off to see the lights
1 solar panel powers 4 huts maybe when you have been a subsistence farmer for the last 4,000 years, to suddenly impose a (I guess supposedly) self-funding electrical generation project on you is a bit unfair and possibly doomed to failure. It is far too easy for us to sit here and from our years of experience of a capitalist lifestyle, with a university education to come up with solutions.
The question really is this; did this village really need a solar power project? They have been doing fine for light for 1,000s of years with wood and fire, followed by 50 years of kerosene lamps.
And when we visited a house and saw the faint light issued by the bulb you thought even more; wouldn't the money be better spent on paying for a teacher for the local school? Buying mosqueto nets for the kids to sleep under? Paying for a health worker to visit once a week?
But then you have to factor in the pride of the people.
For better or for worse this village, this region and this entire country are part of the global community of the 21st century.
The people here may not be well
Spot the solar panel
...and that's a power cable not a clothes line educated but they are not stupid. They go to Assosa (the regional capital). They walk 20 or 30km for market day and they see televisions showing the rest of the world. They see people living and working using electrical power and they want to be part of it.
The reason the entire village wants a light bulb in their house is because it signals advancement.
It's the same reason every office worker wants a PC on his or her desk. Even of if they have no idea how to operate it. Even of it doesn't work (viruses, dust, rainy seasons and power fluctuations having done their worst).
Our friend and worker Mulatu talks about the pride his village had of the single light bulb that hung from a wooden pole in the centre of his village during the time of the communist Derg (1974-1994). He is hardly old enough to remember it; but it must be part of the collective village history else how does he "remember" it.
Note: During the Soviet-supported Derg the government encouraged (forced) agricultural collectives and supplied them with power (one light bulb) and machinery (one tractor).
I asked Mulatu what
This little fella's not sure
There's something not quite right about this dude outside, mum..! happened to the light?
There is still the wooden pole.
I asked him about the tractor?
With the Derg we use the tractor Now?
We use the cow. I asked the Malawi guy privately about the project. Did they provide additional spares? What about acid?
Yes they did. At reduced prices, but you still had to pay. Plus you probably had to get transport to Addis to get them.
The idea was that the engineers got the village to buy in to the project, so that the community as a whole would own the project - increase the charges (in line with "inflation") every year, add their own funds to buy additional panels, train new engineers, agree salaries etc.
It seems that the training in India covered the mechanics of supporting the project but not the economics of supporting the project.
Maybe it did? Maybe the culture here prevents any of the "self-funding" suggestions being implemented?
Whatever. The bottom line was that the poor engineers were financially poor as well as running out of spares/parts to expand the project. You could see that within a year it would
die through lack of acid and further lightning strikes.
Of course, even of the project could supply ideas or moral support, how would the engineers ask for it? They have no email and no telephones. Our visit seemed to be the first contact with anyone vaguely related to the project for years.
Argenyo's Story "Take pictures", said Argenyo, "Take lots of pictures".
We obliged and Argenyo posed with an - unnaturally for him - serious face on, in front of batteries and barrels of acid.
"He has been accused of stealing them", said Bekema, our friend.
Argenyo had been briefly in jail earlier in the year (not an unusual occurance it seems).
As a bureau driver he had been accused of stealing, rather than delivering the equipment to this project from 2006 when he was the driver in another Bureau; the head of which had been accused of "corruption" ('opportunism' and a 'perk of the job' when in favour; corruption when out of favour).
Our pictures would be put on a CD and provided as evidence for Argenyo's court case. No wonder he was keen for us to come!
We'll show Watching the Ferengis
Better than Eastenders... you ours...
The visit ended after a trip around a couple of houses to see the power in action.
The village gathered to say thank-you and good-bye. Everyone was asked to help in any way they could. At the good-bye the Malawian women started taking to one-another and seemed to agree on something.
Unprompted the four began clapping and three of them burst into a dance, much to the delight of the watching village (note: If it wasn't for dial-up internet I'd add the 20Mb video I took).
The mood lifted and people clapped and encouraged them while they shook their bottoms and wiggled their hips.
A big round of applause later we piled into the car and resumed our bumpy road journey back to Assosa.
After a few minutes one of the Ethiopians turned to one of the Malawian women and asked,
"Was that a special dance to say 'thank-you' from Malawi?"
The woman turned to the other woman and chuckled,
"No, that was a dance to attract a man!"
(as if dancing had any other purpose...)
Epilogue: Sara and I talked about the problems of this
Bekema takes a break
Surely a cat in another life? project for some time.
Sara saw it as a waste of time. Spending money on the school is far more important in her book.
As an IT guy I'm right behind the electricity generation. It can be used for education too.
Could they raise the money themselves?
The village said 5 birr/month was the maximum they could afford. The Kebele (village council) had no funds to add.
My questions were; where is the government funding/partnership here? What about local taxes? Could the power generation company get involved?
Then (more realistically) I suggested the local Microfinance Bureau.
I have helped out there with their IT and by all accounts they do a good job providing funds for small projects in the region. In fact, Microfinanced projects seem to be more successful across Africa than huge corporate start-ups, though that is clearly a gross exaggeration.
How could they contact the Bureau in Assosa? Could they get ideas on managing the project? Help? Advice? I don't know.
Our fiend Teddy says he has a friend who works for an organisation that may donate some funds. I gave him the pictures to send them.
Indian Mangos
Look at them monsters! Not even ripe This funding would probably just stave off the inevitable "running out of acid" in another years time. Once that cash injection ran out the project would be back to the same position as it finds itself in today. Just like many other development projects across Africa.
And Argenyo?
He kept himself out of jail with our photographs.
I guess we helped one Ethiopian today...
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