Steve Bell's Blog

Day 4 - Afar and beyond.

2007-02-11T11:03:00.000-06:00

We never did get back to sleep – the braying donkeys and crowing cocks ensured there would be no more sleep that night so Nanci and I sat on the side of our little grass hut until the camp and surrounding village woke and the kids started to gather to wonder at their strange guests.

Again it was going to be a long travel day. Our destination was the holy city in the north called Lallibela. But before leaving the area we wanted to visit the site of a second water weir / diversion project that was currently under construction.

So we packed our things, ate a breakfast of injera, scrambled eggs and goat, said our goodbyes and headed out onto the dusty dry desert.

Some ten or so kilometers from the camp we suddenly came upon the most wondrous hives of activity. Under the direction of SSD, some two hundred Afar, having temporarily diverted the river, were building (without any machinery what-so-ever) a massive weir to divert water to an irrigation ditch that would eventually water several more thousands of acres of land.

It’s hard to describe what this looked like, and the pictures don’t do it justice. Men, women and children, digging, hauling, mixing, pounding, crushing, piling, dragging… It looked like a chaos of activity but sure enough, a sophisticated structure was forming. I was a little confused at first why such a large structure was being built for such a tiny river, but apparently when the rains come, this humble stream becomes a frightful force. The structure itself is designed to withstand the particularly powerful floods that come every 50 years.

Again, the tribe organizes itself to send roughly half its people to the worksite – the work is paid for in food (6 kilos of grain per person, per day – provided by Canadian Foodgrains Bank) while the remainder of the tribe cares for the animals. So the very real need for food today and food security for tomorrow is combined to meet both needs. It’s brilliant. Once the irrigation project is complete, SSD will provide training in sustainable farming techniques and Canadian Foodgrains Bank will continue to provide food for the workers until such time as neither are needed.

The energy of this work site was awesome and exhilarating. We had planned to only stop for a quick visit and ended up staying for several hours.

Irrigation ditch leading away from the river.

Leaving the desert we came to a washed out bridge in the road and had to cross the now dry river bed about a hundred meters upstream. This bridge had been destroyed by a flash flood only two weeks earlier. This gives you an idea of the volatility of the environment here.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that the reason the Afar people have to adopt agriculture (rather than rely solely on their traditional pastoralist way of life) is that climate change has dramatically increased the frequency of drought in a region that is already rather dry and barely able to provide food to sustain it’s inhabitants. Having been back now from Ethiopia for several weeks, what has most dramatically impacted me is the conviction that our contribution to climate change is one of the most pressing moral issues of our day. We, especially in the Church, are horrified at loss of life and well being as a result of sexually promiscuous lifestyles, but we are not yet horrified by our own environmentally promiscuous lifestyle that is arguably destroying more lives than the former.

I read a paper recently by Walter Brueggemann , a tremendous contemporary theologian, who argues that the persistence of hunger in a world entirely capable of producing enough food for all, in the end, is an issue of fidelity; a fidelity that issues from a three-way covenant between God, the earth, and its people. For our part, our covenant is to a love-fueled justice –one that is binding not in the remote, legal sense, but rather in the familial sense. In other words, I don’t share a table with my wife and children because I am legally bound to do so, or because of an intellectual consent to an external notion of egalitarian justice. I share a table because I adore them. I’m just happy to be there with them. Charity is not a result of do-goodism, it is the offspring of cherishing, that is… love. But love puts claims on both the lover and the beloved. And I can’t authentically proclaim my love and continue to willfully live in a way that brings harm to those I cherish.

I guess I am beginning to understand that charity is not simply giving from “my” excess to another’s pitiful need. At the supper table, I don’t think myself generous when my children load their plates with food. We don’t do that kind of math at all. We eat, we laugh, we tell stories as we subtly, mutually (unconsciously) negotiate our life together. True charity is about coming to the table, with all God’s children and celebrating responsibly and joyfully the gift of creation that is God’s good gift to all. It’s a very different way of thinking about possessions and entitlement and all the assumptions that make the capitalist world go ‘round.

Sorry…. I’m rambling.

We left the Afar around noon and drove the rest of the day arriving early evening in Lallibela. Again, the landscape was powerful, the people beautiful and the ride was worth every bumpy, joint-jarring moment:

Those are my sunglasses!

Back to the story… The Afar Region / Day 3

2007-02-03T14:29:00.000-06:00

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.

A Moment of Zen...

2007-01-30T10:22:00.000-06:00

“Despair relieves itself at the expense of those in its environs.” How else do we explain the West’s willingness to expend the earth’s resources to such a degree that the rest of the globe is deprived of its share and the earth is endangered? This is a question Marva Dawn asks in her book Unfettered Hope – A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society. It is from this same book that I re-read, earlier this morning, that in order to bring everyone on the planet to the same general level of consumption and well-being as the average Canadian; we would need the resources of four or five more earths - right now.

What is interesting about Marva Dawn’s analysis however is that she doesn’t simply blame callous greed and ambition for the present imbalance. It is more tragic than that. It is the profound loss of systems of meaning that causes a people to “ease its pain by means of production of more commodities (and the consumption of them), while the rest of the world suffers from an opposite kind of hopelessness – the inability to secure what is necessary to live.”

If that is true, who will take this painful thorn out of our paw? She quotes Raimon Panikkar: Human beings cannot live with a conscious, unrelieved sense of the “vanity” of their lives and endeavors. If their gods die, if their optimism is dashed by events, if the habit of hope languishes in them, they will likely construct bogus hopes out of thin air and sheer determination.

Jesus help us. The unfettering of hope, Dawn suggests, is the crucial work that needs doing in our numbing affluence. This is probably worth thinking through – especially for me as I continue to contemplate the nature of my work and calling. What kind of music, which stories, help to restore a practical “habit of hope” to a culture that has lost its sense of place within the wider context? A doctor friend of mine once explained that a cancer cell is simply a cell that has lost its sense of place in relationship to the rest of the body. And the result is catastrophe for the whole body."

Everyone asks us, “Has the trip o Ethiopia changed you?” Well… sadly no. When I came back devastated from what I saw in Calcutta over a decade ago I told a friend that I'd never recover from what I saw there. "It's amazing," he said, "and disappointing, just how quickly you'll recover." But that’s the work now – the work of turning an adventure into a transformation.

The Road to Weldiya

2007-01-28T16:55:00.000-06:00

We woke pretty early to get on the road. Sam was concerned to get our traveling done before nightfall as the roads would be fairly rough and he didn't relish navigating them after dark. So we gathered in the lobby at 6:30 am and met the last two additions to our party. Kebede Lule is an independent Ethiopian filmmaker who Sam hired to accompany us as guide, translator and cultural consultant. Kebede has produced numerous informational films for various Christian development/aid organizations like World Vision, Compassion etc. His story is incredible, having been imprisoned and tortured in the 80s for his resistance to the communist party and as a consequence of his faith. His spirit is gentle, almost shy, and he has a heart of a servant - I mean this in the most flattering sense.

Mesfin was hired as a driver for the extra vehicle we would need to make our journey. Mesfin spoke very little English and so we didn't get to know him well. But he seemed like a nice enough fellow with a ready smile.

I don't remember much detail of the first few hours - the highway was initially paved as we wound through the mountains, north-east toward the city of Weldia where we would spend the night. There were people everywhere with goats aplenty as well as cattle. At first I thought the amount of folks on the road was due to our proximity to Addis, but I soon realized that in a country of 70 million people in an area roughly twice the size of Manitoba, it was unlikely we would experience many uninhabited areas. I was surprised at how mountainous it was. Largely due to media coverage of the famine in the 80s, my image of Ethiopia was of barren flat-lands with little or no vegetation. I had no expectation of the numerous spectacular vistas we would encounter over the next week.

We stopped for breakfast in Debre Berhan, one of the oldest towns in Ethiopia - scrambled eggs with peppers and the finest cup of coffee I've ever had. Although Ethiopia is the only African country that has never been colonized, they were briefly occupied by the Italians in the early 20th century. The happy result being that no matter where you are in the country, no matter how remote and cut off from the rest of the world, you can always find a restaurant of sorts with an industrial barista machine with some of the best coffee or Cafe Macchiato you'll get anywhere. The bathrooms however, would be consistently less impressive.

Camels! I wasn't expecting camels! This fellow stopped to talk to us while his camels continued to run down the mountainside. He was hoping we'd help him out with a few bir (Ethiopian dollars) but none of us thought to exchange for modest denominations of money so we convinced him to accept a few cookies instead. Once he accepted the cookies, he suddenly startled to see his camels trotting gingerly a kilometer or two down the road and he bolted off in a panic.

One of the highlights of the whole trip was the thousands of gorgeous children who everywhere waved and smiled eagerly at us. To stop the vehicle even for a few minutes was to get swamped by kids. They all wanted their pictures taken - some would ask for a bir or two but most asked for a pen. "Pen sir? I go to school. I have exams. Pen please." We must have heard that a thousand times.

The kids loved to tell us (in English) their names. Nanci asked some to write their names in her journal - for some reason I find this very moving. My name is Tew! My name is Kasu! My name is Mitu! My name is... I am here! I exist! I am not one of 70 million, I am Deribe! Don't forget me. I can imagine it delights God to hear someone proudly say their name. And I can hear God respond fondly, "Yes indeed. You are Abebe. I remember you well."

The poverty here is astounding. Most of Ethiopia's population are farmers. And most farm families are surviving on the harvest of a meager acre or two of land. Here in the highlands there is not much possibility of irrigation and so survival is dependent on the good will of nature. The last few years here have had good rains and so we didn't get a sense of current destitution, but it is not hard to understand how perennially vulnerable these folks are. With the population density such as it is, and the need for building materials and firewood, the mountains have already been stripped of trees and the resulting problems of erosion are evident everywhere. The population of Ethiopia is expected to double in the next twenty years and I can't help but shudder at the inevitable catastrophe that lies ahead in the not too distant future.

Thatched huts and extended-family hamlets are everywhere (average family size - 6). Most of the country lives with absolutely no modern conveniences in the home or in the field. Cooking is done on open fire, water is hauled or harvested, and fields are cultivated by the simplest, labour intensive means. Ethiopians work very, very hard.

By noon, the paved roads gave way to gravel roads which became our reality for the rest of the trip. Often, their condition slowed us to a walking crawl and our bodies were soon bruised and sore from bouncing around like "dice in a cup." A fine dust filled the air and covered everything. Following close behind evil smelling, black-smoke billowing vehicles kept one in a mile state of nausea. Narrow roads, crumbling away to sharp escarpments and more than one vehicle overturned or over the edge kept one somewhat uneasy about our safety despite the obvious skill of our drivers.

Reminders of past conflicts were plentiful. Wars here have been many - conflict internally as well as with others, especially with Eritrea to the north. Sam opined that if Ethiopia would determine, for one generation, to solve her disputes with dialogue instead of guns, she could overcome her primary difficulties with the money and resources currently sustaining the apparatus of war. I wonder what good could be accomplished if in North America we did the same? What would it take for us to repent of our trust in "horses and chariots" to ensure our covetous self-security?

We eventually arrived in Weldiya at Lal Hotel (a solid 1.5 stars) after driving fourteen and a half hours to cover 450 kilometers. We had a quick supper and crawled under our mosquito nets only to lie awake most of the night as a result of jet-lag and over-tiredness. Tomorrow we will come to the Support for Sustainable Development base camp in the Afar dessert - another long day - 6:30am departure.

January 7 - It's Christmas!

2007-01-22T14:55:00.000-06:00

January 7 is Christmas Day in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was Christianized in the fourth century when a young man named Frumentius found himself shipwrecked on the on Ethiopian shores while on the way to India. Frumentius was taken to the Ethiopian palace of King Ella Amida eventually finding favour with the King as his personal secretary. Frumentius was granted freedom to share his faith and started several informal Christian communities in the northern region of Aksum. Eventually the young man returned to Egypt and requested the Egyptian Orthodox Bishop Athanasius send a bishop to Ethiopia to establish the church there. Athanasius in turn ordained Frumentius and sent him back to Ethiopia where he worked tirelessly as the first Bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Frumentius is remembered fondly as Abuna Salama or, Bishop of Peace.

But Ethiopia has deeper memory than that. Legend remembers the Queen of Sheba as being an Ethiopian Queen who travelled to Palestine to meet King Solomon. While there, she was impregnated by Solomon and upon return to Ethiopia gave birth to Solomon's son Menelik. At age twenty, Menelik returned to meet his father and according to tradition, Menelik asked his father for a replica of the Ark of the Covenant to take back to Ethiopia. Solomon granted his son his wish, but Menelik had other designs and somehow managed to swap the copy for the original and brought the actual Ark to Ethiopia where it remains under guard to this day. So, Ethiopia has deep Jewish roots as well. Emperors since eagerly boasted Solomonic lineage including Hailee Selassie who claimed to be the 225^th direct decedent of King Solomon, son of David. There are still remote Ethiopian-Jewish communities of people called Falishas whose practice, through centuries of isolation, is almost unrecognizably Jewish. For those interested there is a great book about all this called: The Sign and the Seal by Graham Hancock. I'm about halfway into the book now and it is terribly interesting.

ANYWAY...back to our trip. We woke Sunday morning and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel before walking the gorgeous grounds for a couple of hours. These were originally the grounds of Hailee Selassie's palace. There were several wedding celebrations with exuberant dancing and singing spread out over the compound among the exotic trees, grasses and flowers. According to the doorman, there can be as many as sixty weddings a day here.

We went for lunch at Sam's
house passing through the city witnessing the thousands of goats brought to the city to be bought and slaughtered (on the spot) for the Christmas festivities. We saw mounds of fresh bloody goat skins recently relieved of their inhabitants. Mmmm-mmm.

At Sam's we had an orientation to the country and the week's plans. It was also a good time to relax and get acquainted with each other. Heather read from Isaiah 58 which I've heard hundreds of times I'm sure but here, in the poorest country of the world, there was an weighty press to the words: “Why does your worship seem vacant? Why do I seem to not be listening? This is the fast (worship) I'm interested in – that you share your food with the hungry, invite the homeless poor into your homes, put clothes on the shivering ill-clad Do this and your lives will glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. You'll be a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.” (my paraphrase)

Later in the week, Jim would mention a recently discovered stat that if everyone in the world were to live at North American standards, we would need the resources of three earths. Another stat that shocked me was that if your personal net worth exceeds $60,000 you are in the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world. I don't know many middle-aged Canadians who are not in this category. By contrast, in Ethiopia, the average person's net worth is $60. It's amazing how comfortable we are with these realities. And I know that no matter how disturbing this reality is for me here in Ethiopia, I know I'll easily make my peace with it within a short time of being home.

We returned to the hotel for supper. This would be our first traditional Ethiopian meal - various vegetable and lentil dishes (some hot, some mild) served on a communal bed of greyish flat bread called Injera. Injera is a sourdough pancake made from a tiny grain called Tef which is pretty much unique to Ethiopia I believe. There are no utensils, one simply rips off a piece of bread and uses the bread to grab the various offerings in the center of the dish. If you run out, they bring a plate full of rolled Injera that resembles a tray of hot face cloths. This was all washed down with a honey mead called Tej – a fermented sweet drink which tasted like yeast and sugar – not great, but interesting. It was all pretty good, the ambiance was fantastic and the company fine. We may have been less enthusiastic had we realized that every meal thereafter would be a variation of the same theme. As Larry T would later say, “Injera! Injera! Injera! ...spam and Injera!” (-Monte Python reference.... you had to be there.)

We were in bed by 10pm – heads somewhat fuzzy from the combination of jet-lag and Tej. Sleep came quick but didn't last long. Both Nanci and I woke up numerous times, eventually abandoning the attempt to sleep altogether spending a good bit of the night reading.

Jan 5- 6 We're Off!!

2007-01-22T13:56:00.000-06:00

Nanci and I left Winnipeg at noon on January 5^th and flew to Toronto where we met up with Larry Thiessen and Jim and Sharon vanDijk. Larry is a producer from Edmonton who came along to oversee the filming of our trip. He is an old friend of mine who produced my two concert videos and the recent music video for my song This is Love (using footage from the film Jesus of Nazareth). When Canadian Food Grains Bank (hereafter CFGB) asked if I'd be willing to film this trip for a documentary, I pretty much insisted Larry be the producer - I trust him.

Larry and I at the Support for Sustainable Development base-camp / Afar Region

And when Larry was asked to produce the film, he pretty much insisted that Jim vanDijk be the camera man - Larry trusts Jim. Larry thought it unlikely Jim would be free to come as he is in much demand from Hollywood as one of the better camera men available (recent films include X-Men III and The Fabulous Four).

Jim and Sharon in Weldia

But, as God willed, both Jim and his wife Sharon had a brief window of time which corresponded exactly with our trip and we were thrilled to have them bring their wonderful selves and gifts on the trip.

Our flight to Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia's capital) included lay-overs in Frankfurt, Germany and Khartoum,Sudan. There's not much to report here except at one point looking out the window and seeing below me what looked like enormous white waves “frozen in motion”. It took a few minutes to realize we were over the Sahara! The feeling of awe was rather overwhelming - to see something that loomed so large in the legends of my childhood memory - and there is was - in all it's barren glory! Very cool.

We finally arrived in Addis at 10pm, dizzy and slightly nauseous from 24 hours in transit. Immediately we were greeted by Sam VanderEnde. Sam lives in Addis Abbaba with his wife Cathy and two children Maisha (life) and Gelila ( Gallilee). Sam is the International Field Representative for CFGB. His job is to assist and oversee the local partners with the various relief and development projects supported by CFGB (I'll describe how CFGB works in another post). Cathy was once the country representative for Oxfam but has recently started a business manufacturing silk and various by-products of silk industry. Ethiopia is a land of 60 million subsistence farmers and desperately needs to develop other income streams. Cathy and Sam believe silk is a viable, sustainable industry that could significantly help diversify the economy.

Sam would be accompanying us for the next week's travels but his first task was to guide us to the visa office threading us through the belaboured and chaotic process of obtaining a simple visa before emerging at baggage only to discover that my guitar, and three of Jim's bags (all his clothes and two bags of camera gear) had not arrived with us. Apparently some dear soul in Frankfurt had decided we wouldn't need them until the next day – unfortunately, we would be leaving Addis before they arrived and would have to continue our trip without them. Between Larry, Sam and I we figured we could keep Jim in clean clothes. Sam knew a local film producer who might lend us some camera gear and Sam's wife had a guitar she would lend me for the week. We emerged from baggage claims over an hour later to find Heather Plett waiting patiently outside the security area. Heather had already been in Addis a few days making arrangements and securing permission from the Ethiopian Government for us to film in their country.

Heather is Resource Director for the Canadian Fo0d Grains Bank

It was dark as we bumped along the streets of Addis to our hotel. I was too tired to really take notice of much. The hotel was modest but clean with lovely gardens. The rooms had a distinct odour of “old” mixed with mothballs. Two single beds (which would be the norm for the rest of the trip) and a bathroom that lifelessly dribbled water if you opened a tap. Design and decor felt like we had gone back in time to the forties – but it was clean and comfortable enough for weary travelers. We all met in the lounge for a late supper (sandwiches were all they were serving at that hour) before collapsing into the only good sleep we would have for the many days.

Antecedents

2007-01-21T15:35:00.000-06:00

This blogging thing didn't turn out like I thought it would. I thought I would spend an hour so each night of the Ethiopia trip blogging and leaving pictures for you all to see as our journey progressed. What I didn't count on was the long arduous travel days, the lack of any processing time, inaccessibility to the internet and a general inability (partly due to jet lag) to focus the soul after so many images and experiences came rushing at us like headlights in a snowstorm.

There is an African story of some western travelers who followed native guides on a particularly dramatic journey. At one point the guides sat down and refused to move on. Upon questioning, the guides explained the reason they had stopped was that they had to give time for their souls to catch up to their bodies. A good bit of our trip felt like our bodies were dragging our reluctant souls along at a pace that seemed unfortunate - much like a hurried mother drags a crying child down a sidewalk who just wanted to stop to pet a puppy. We had a job to do and a lot of ground to cover. But I think our souls are still back in the highands of Ethiopia somewhere gasping in awe at a stunning view, or teasing some kids, or marveling while some five-year-old herder coerces 50 or so dog-skinny goats up a mountain side. And it just may take some time for our souls to even want to return to these bodies now recouping from the second shock of jet lag in a few short weeks.

Over the next few days, I'll recall the trip as best as I can remember it. I have Nanci's penciled notes to help. But let me start from before the beginning:

As our kids have grown and become increasingly independent, Nanci and I have been longing to share more of our life together. For years now, my work as a musician has kept me travelling far and wide while Nanci's work as a teacher and homemaker has kept her closer to home. For the most part, this has been okay. We've experienced the loneliness of so much of our lives being separate but it's a life we've felt called to and sustained in. Recently, however this has started to stretch thin, and as our boys don't need the intense care they once did, we've been watching for ways to live and experience life together more fully. So a few months ago I decided to go on a fast requesting that God would grant us this wish. And I decided I would fast from coffee as I drink so much of the stuff that a coffee fast would remind me many times a day to pray our request. It was less than a month into the fast that I got a call from Heather Plett at the Canadian Food Grains Bank asking if I would consider going to Ethiopia, and the request extended to Nanci as well as myself. What I didn't know at the time, but has since become a source of amusement to me, is that Ethiopia is famous for many things, not the least of which is that Ethiopia turns out to be the geographic origin of the coffee tree :-)

Another significant antecedent to our trip was a conversation I had with a friend just two days before we left home. Cathy Campbell is an Anglican priest here in Winnipeg who wrote a deeply insightful book on food justice issues as they relate to “kingdom etiquette.” The book is called Stations of the Banquet (Liturgical Press) and think will become my main text as I reflect back on our trip over the next months. Anyway, Cathy encouraged me to recall as I travel that immediately after his birth, we first encounter Jesus, the bread of life, lying all swaddling and gorgeous... in a feeding trough. There is something profoundly sacramental about food. And if we would have eyes to see and ears to hear, what we learn might be far more than a flat, linear understanding of food security, but rather of gift, gospel and the dignified communion that springs from encountering together and sharing God's goodness. Food is life and Christ is food – family is celebrated, nourished and sustained around the table. “Come to the table” has been an almost audible pulse of the last few weeks – perhaps it always has been so, but like the pulse of crickets in the night, it sometimes takes a particular circumstance to notice what has never ceased to sound.

One Week Later

2007-01-14T11:58:00.000-06:00

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.

Safe In Addis

2007-01-07T09:43:00.001-06:00

After 25 hours in transit through Toronto, Frankfurt, Khartoum (Sudan) we arrived in Addis to find my guitar and several of Jim, the camara man's bags remained in Frankfurt and won't join us again now until the end of the trip. So today was partially spent getting some camera gear, a guitar and clothes for Jim.

Addis is a city of about 3 million and we are staying in an older hotel in the center of the city that is built in the former palace grounds. The hotel is not much to write home about but the grounds are gorgeous. Outside the compound is a rambling city that at first glance seems to be a large field of rubble with buildings growing haphazardly out of it. - Lots of goats! It turns out that today is Ethiopian Christmas and folks buy and skin goats on the spot for this evening's festivities. One can see high piles of freshly removed skins in the middle of the sidewalks.

We didn't do much in terms of site seeing, we slept in of course - went for lunch at Sam and Cathy VanderEnde's. Sam is the regional rep for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and will be our guide and companion for the whole week. We'll now take a walk about the neighbourhood and get back for a traditional supper and some Ethiopian music and dance.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries of the world and that is evidenced by the sprawling slums and crumbing roads and sidewalks - but the people are very colourful, obviously affectionate and quite shy but very smiley. I am looking forward to the coming days.

I seems like I won't have much access to the internet so I don't know when I can post again. I'll journal everyday and post a lot at a time whenever I can.

I wish I was more reflective and descriptive now but the brain is a little fuzzy and jetlagged. I'll try to be more eloqent in coming posts.

Tomorrow is a travel day to a lowland area on the way to Afar. Apparently the vistas will be spectacular and the temperature will get quite warm as we decend from the mountains.

I'll sign out - others want on this computer.

Peace.

Itinerary to Include Kenya

2007-01-04T23:31:00.000-06:00

We're leaving for Ethiopia in the morning. I'm not done packing yet. It's so hard to know how to pack for such a trip. There has been a late addition of a few days in Kenya.

Anyway - here's the itinerary as far as I know at this point:

Jan. 5-6 Fly to Ethiopia via Toronto and Frankfurt. We arrive in Addis Ababa (capital city) at 10 pm
Jan. 7 Day of orientation and exploration of Addis
Jan. 8 Travel by road to Weldyiya (long travel day)
Jan. 9 Arrive mid-day at SSD (Support for Sustainable Developement) base camp in the lowlands of Afar Region. Orientation to SSD and operations. Afternoon filming.
Jan. 10 Mid-morning depart for rock-hewn churches of Lalibela
Jan. 11 Travel to FHI (Food for the Hungry) Arb Gebyia base camp in South Gondor. Orientation to FHI and operations.
Jan. 12 Full-day of on-site filming
Jan. 13 Morning departure for Bahr Dar
Jan. 14 Long travel day to Addis Ababa
Jan. 15 Early morning debriefing. Mid-morning flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Travel about an hour south to Mitaboni to visit various projects going on there with water, food distribution, micro-credit etc.We will travel back to Machakos late in the day to visit a girl's school and possibly perform a song or two.
Jan. 16 Take part (sing) in a gathering/media event to launch their new micro-credit program. Visit several other projects in the Machakos area.
Jan. 17 Morning departure for Nairobi for a lunch with the field staff before boarding a plane for home.
Jan. 18 Arrive home (after 32 hours in transit).

This is about all I can tell you. I will post as often as I get access to the web- the next one will likely be from Addis on Sunday.

It's betime for bonzo.

Invited To Ethiopia

2007-01-03T21:20:00.000-06:00

About a month before Christmas 06 I got a call from Heather Plett at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank asking if we would be able to travel to Ethiopia in January 07 to visit some of the work the Foodgrains Bank was doing there. The proposal was that we'd be accompanied by a film crew who would document our discovering and learning resulting in a short documentary to send to churches across Canada later in the year.

Neither Nanci or I have been to Africa and as the timing seemed right we were very happy to say yes to the trip which will begin in a couple of days: January 5 - 17 / 07.

Immediately I got on line and started learning about Ethiopia of which I knew nothing.

Ethiopia is a country about twice the land mass of my own province Manitoba but with over twice the population of Canada. (75 million as compared to Canada's 33 million) We are so used to vast empty space that this seems staggering to me. Although it is predominantly an agriculture-based economy, Ethiopia currently has a structural food deficit of four to six million people (during a good rain year of which there have been only seven in the last 24 years). Alarmingly, at her present growth, Ethiopia's population will more than double by 2050. Food insecurity is a staggering threat to these people.

If you don't know where Ethiopia is, you'll find her in the Horn of Africa landlocked between Sudan on the West, Eritrea and Djibouti on the North , Somalia to the East and Kenya to the South. Her history is fascinating. Ethiopia is, I think, the oldest independent civilization in the world and boasts the Queen of Sheba no less, the son of Israel's King Solomon, and claims to be the place of origin for the coffee tree. It is still considered to be predominantly Orthodox Christian but now almost equally Muslim. Her last Emperor, before a brutal struggle and emergence as a fragile democracy (1980s), was the complex Hailee Selassie whom is revered most highly in Rastafarianism (ya mon).

I've read a couple of facinating books in preparation for the trip. First is The Abyssinian by Jean-Christophe Rufin (Doctors Without Boarders). The Abyssinian is a novel that takes place in 1699. Louis XIV of France sends an embassy to the most mysterious of oriental sovereigns, the Negus, or King, of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia). The novel gives an overall and fascinating orientation to the rich history of Ethiopia.

The other book, Notes From a Hyena's Belly by Nega Mezlekia is a contemporary (true tale) of a young boy growing up in last turbulent years of Hailee Selassie's reign. Rich in folk-lore and heart-renting in detail, Notes gets under the skin of the media's Africa and invites you into her own telling of the story. This was a great read!

It's bed-time. More later.

Meet Nanci

2007-01-02T20:53:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to start a blog for some time now and have put it off simply because it seems like a lot of work. But recently my wife Nanci and I were asked by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to travel to Ethiopia to experience the work they are doing there, and to film our trip for a short documentary DVD that will be shown in Canadian Churches in the fall of O7. Nanci and I are very excited to go and I figured this would be a good time to get the blog going so family and friends can follow our trip. So before I do anything else I want to introduce and post a picture of Nanci.

We have been married 24 years now and we have three children: Sarah is 22 and recently married to Steve Giardino, Jesse is 19 and embarking on a career as a recording engineer. Micah is 17 and finishing his last year of high school.

Nanci is a teacher who has spent most of her years teaching Jr. High (her fist love) but is currently substitute teaching all years. Her majors in university were French, English and Theatre.

Nanci loves the outdoors - more than anyone I've met actually. She's very funny (most of my stage jokes are a derivative of something she has previously said). Nanci adores her family and our dog Daisy. And I adore her (Nanci).