One Week Later

Well hello! The last time I had access to the Internet was seven days ago, and 2000 km of spine-compressing road travel through some of the most beautiful country I've seen in my life. Not all of the road was brutal – the first few hours and the last few were quite nice with beautiful newly paved highway – but the bulk of travel through the mountains of Ethiopia were on fairly rough to brutally rough gravel roads sometimes made of 10 inch rock (not the ½” down we're accustomed to) that, at times, jostled and tossed our vehicles down to barely a walking speed.

I didn't have time to journal as I went along so I'll just have to give a brief overview now and flesh it out with photos when I get home later this week. We had three major stops over the week. The first was in the Afar desert two days drive north-east of Addis Ababa. We stayed at the base camp of Support for Sustainable Development among the Afar people – nomadic pastoralists who are living now as they have for centuries, in tiny straw huts that can be dismantled, transported by camel and reassembled in a new location according to the whim of nature – rainfall/drought, malaria outbreaks, access to natural forage, etc.

Like ourselves in the west (but for very different reasons), the traditional way of life for the Afar has become unsustainable. There are currently 1.6 million people and perhaps 20 – 25 million cattle and goats competing for survival in a region where climate change has increased the frequency of drought from every 10-15 years to every 5-7 years. As the population rapidly increases, and food sources become increasingly unreliable, the Afar are beginning to make the difficult transition from a nomadic pastoral way of life, to a more sedentary way which includes agriculture as a major component of the community's food security.

Support for Sustainable Development , with the aid of Canadian Food Grains Bank, has set up a camp in the middle of the desert and has helped the Afar build a water diversion project which includes a 5 km, hand dug, water diversion system that currently irrigates 200 hectares of land affecting the lives of over 900 families (average family size is six people). A second project is underway which will irrigate 160 hectares of land and affect the lives of over 1150 families.

The work being done there is incredible- I have much to say about it and lots of great pictures – again, once I get back home I'll post much more detail and reflection.

The second major site we visited was more north-central. Lalibela is named after King Lalibla who in the the 12th century (legend has it) was instructed by God to build 11 churches by carving them out of the rock. These are now considered to be the 8th wonder of the world. Ethiopia has deep roots in Judaism and Christianity as these 11 marvels confirm. It's a complicated history – again, I'll flesh that out as best as I can when I get home.

Our third stop was south west of Lalibela on the way back down to Addis Ababa, in the mountainous region of Amhara. There, in a remote village called Arb Gebeya , we visited the base camp for a Christian development organization called Food for the Hungry International (FHI). This is a region whose land has so depleted by over farming and the demands of over population that twenty years ago there was not a tree to be seen, and the land itself had all but stopped producing food. Run-off from rainfall has badly eroded the hillsides, washing away the topsoil, becoming almost uninhabitable for a people who have nowhere to go. FHI, supported by Canadian Food Grains Bank, started a program of reforestation, gully rehabilitation, terrace management and crop rotation that has now begun to reverse the erosion damage and soil depletion. At the base camp we visited, they employ hundreds of local folk to produce and plant over 4 million seedlings a year (trees, grasses, shrubs and nutrient replenishing crops). The program in Arb Gebeya has dramatically altered the landscape and made food production a sustainable reality for some 56,000 people. It's incredible, really.

I have much to say about the beauty of the land, the determination of the people and the profound impact of the Food Grains Bank partners here on the ground. But for now, the internet is sluggish and I'm not the only one who wants on, so I'll sign off.

Tomorrow, Nanci and I leave for Kenya to visit several more of CFGB's project partners. I'll post if it is reasonably convenient, otherwise you'll hear from me again Thursday or Friday.

Thanks for your prayers. Nanci and I have had an incredible experience we'll be unpacking for some time I”m sure.