Back to the story… The Afar Region / Day 3

Leaving Weldiya

We again rose early in the morning so we could get to the Afar region before noon. For several hours, the journey continued much the same as it had the day before except that we left the main road and began to travel into what felt increasingly remote. The spectacular relief of mountains and valleys continued to astonish us. At one point we stopped to view one of the few lakes we would see – but quickly were engaged by a family who lived roadside. There was something uniquely lovely about these folks and our short encounter, trying to communicate, laughing at our mutual clumsiness, taking pictures, sharing names etc, is still one of my favorite memories of the trip.

One of the disappointments of being foreign, and wealthily so, is the inevitable divide or barrier that such a chasm creates. I often felt sad that with most roadside encounters, interest in us was largely material. And who can blame them? These are some of the poorest people in the world. But deep imbalances of wealth make it almost impossible to be genuinely interested in each other as people - and that, perhaps, is the greatest poverty of all.

With this family, however, there seemed to be something genuinely mutual and joyful about just hanging out on the road for the half hour or so we stayed. For those few minutes I was quite conscious of being, well… happy. And I honestly think they felt the same.

We continued to wind our way through the terrain until we finally came to the Afar Desert which is one of the lowest regions in all of Africa.

Roughly 1/7^th the size of Manitoba, the Afar region hosts 1.6 million people (mostly nomadic pastoralists) and some 10 million sheep, goats, cattle and camels. It is an extremely arid region, flat and hot with sparse vegetation. This is the area where Lucy was found, one of the oldest human fossil remains (3.2 million years) ever discovered.

The Afar people live nomadically in villages of dismantable grass huts – basically large upside-down baskets covered in grass. They boast they can pack up a whole village in less than a day to move to a new region. Moves are precipitated by depletion of foraging for livestock, or by outbreaks of malaria. Recently, however, their traditional way of life has been threatened by climate change; already a hostile environment with droughts typically coming every 15-20 years, now the droughts come every 5-8 years making the land incapable of sustaining its inhabitants. For the Afar people to survive, they need to take up the challenge of agriculture, something relatively new to them.

Several years ago, a group of young Ethiopian agronomists and engineers set up an organization (Support for Sustainable Development) and base camp in the Afar and began to help the indigenous people transition from a strictly pastoralist nomadic existence to a more settled agriculturalist way of life. I think it’s pretty hard for us to imagine how profound and difficult this transition might be. But now, in our own context, global warming is forcing us to accept that our way of life is also unsustainable as well. We haven’t quite felt the absolute pinch of this yet, but there is no longer any doubt that our survival is going to depend on a courageous and radical rethinking of the very assumptions that fuel (pardon the pun) our culture and economy.

For the Afar, one of the first structural developments needed was irrigation. As the land has never been farmed, soil fertility is high – just add water, and the place explodes with green. Elizabeth is a young Ethiopian woman from Addis Ababa. She has a degree in agriculture but

her gift has been the ability to mobilize a people to build a water weir and five kilometers of irrigation ditch using a food-for-work program (sponsored by Canadian Foodgrains Bank). Elizabeth organized a massive effort that has resulted, without modern machinery, in a desert becoming a garden effecting the food security needs of thousands of indigenous people. Not only is this a green revolution, but a social one as well. At the onset of the project, the Afar people (read: the men) claimed that the project would never work if led by a woman. Two years later, not only has the desert yielded needed food as a result of her determination, but now women sit at councils with men in a society that has never known such a thing. This is the stuff of miracles.

Elizabeth and I on water weir.
Irrigation ditch leading away from water weir. This was all dug by hand.

Same ditch a few kilometers later.

The actual farming/gardening projects have been led by this man (I can’t remember his name.) He too is an agronomist from Addis who is teaching basic sustainable farming techniques (crop rotation and composting) ensuring soil fertility without resorting to inorganic inputs (fertilizers) which contribute to a whole host of problematic assumptions and practices. This is responsible, organic, sustainable agriculture – food secured in covenant fidelity to the land. I found myself struggling to hold back tears as we walked through the acres and acres of bounty. Showing me hot peppers!

Plowing newly realized farmland.

Later that evening, the community gathered to share with us some of their traditional dance and song. This was extremely moving on so many levels. It was hard to believe that we were so privileged to witness such things. I sang as well – it was the first time any of them had experienced ‘western’ music. I’m not sure how much they liked it, but evidently they found me somewhat interesting. At one point an elder stuffed a small amount of money in my shirt pocket. Apparently this was a symbol of approval. I found out later there was some stress about me being a Christian among Muslims, but although I was unaware of the underlying tension, I fortunately didn’t say anything alienating. In the end, it was a mutual encounter that we all enjoyed immeasurably.

Kids watching me play and sing.

Teenage girls pose for Nanci

After darkness settled, we sat out under the stars on grass mats. One woman roasted and ground coffee for us (a traditional ceremony we would enjoy many times during our trip) as we debriefed the day before turning in for the night.

Our sleeping quarters - affectionately referred to as The Hilton

At about four in the morning, Nanci and I were both awake listening to the animal sounds, both familiar and unfamiliar. We walked out into the night air and stood for some time under the still gaze of heaven’s stars. I felt strangely like a ghost briefly privileged to witness something ancient and deeply good. I half expected to see Abraham standing beside us, unaware of our presence, in humble awe, silently receiving God’s favour. It was a holy moment. We stayed out to greet the dawn.