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Rehabilitating a gully with barriers and trees |
When I left off the last blog, our Area Directors Wawa
and Kristen were halfway through their visit to our program. Kristen and I had
visited the Prison Ministry project earlier that week. Now it was Wawa’s turn
to experience more of the program on the ground once Kristen left Saturday
morning.
On Sunday morning, we decided to break our routine of
attending our local international church. Instead, we accompanied our colleague
Solomon and attended his Ethiopian Mennonite (Meserete Kristos) Church. I am
afraid we have been a bit remiss, and this was actually the first time we had
attended an MK service since we moved to Ethiopia. For the sake of our kids, we
have intentionally made a church home with a congregation that speaks English,
and we volunteer a lot in a variety of capacities. It is not easy to find a
Sunday when neither Paul nor I have responsibilities. But we’d blocked out May 15 long back and made
the trip across town.
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Mesfin, myself and Wawa at Bahir Dar |
The sanctuary was pretty large, and when we got there at
10 am, it was perhaps half full. The congregation began with a time of prayer
and intercession. By 10:15 when the sound system was up and running, there were
almost no chairs empty. A group of young adults, dressed in white with shining
gold trim, did a beautiful job of leading music and certainly put one in mind
of a host of angels. About halfway through the service, we were given an
opportunity to greet the community. Paul had carefully practiced all the proper
prescribed greetings in Amharic and he did a very nice job. We could see how
delighted people were that we were trying to understand and speak their language.
A guest pastor gave a very moving and quiet message on the subject of the
corrosive influence of bitterness. The only difficulty we had was the high volume
of the sound system. I have now discovered that David must have extra sensitive
ears because the worship time was almost unbearable for him and he had to
leave the sanctuary for a while. According to Solomon, extreme loudness is
sadly typical for evangelical churches here. We now know to leave David at home
next time.
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walk along Lake Tana |
Wawa, our colleague Mesfin, and I were up early on Monday
morning to head to the airport for a 7 am flight to Bahir Dar on our way to the
town of Debre Marcos. Normally, we would drive directly there in about 6 hours.
Unfortunately, there has been quite a bit of insecurity along the main road
between Addis and Debre Marcos in the past months, due to violent clashes
between extremist ethnic groups (nothing to do with the conflict in the north).
So, for security reasons, we flew further north and then were met by an MSCFSO
partner staff member with a truck to drive us five hours back south. Wawa has
been struggling with back issues in the past few months, so first, we needed to
stretch our legs and get a good walk. I was glad to have the chance to walk
just a little bit along Lake Tana, hear the orioles in the trees, and experience
a few minutes in this new, green city. We got a quick breakfast and then hit
the road.
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Clearing a field of eucalyptus |
I have never traveled at all in this part of the Amhara
region – Gojjam is one of the more culturally conservative areas – and it was
really wonderful to finally see more of the country. As we left the lake area,
we gained elevation back up into the highlands. Most homes are built
traditionally with tall eucalyptus poles and then plastered with a special kind
of mud-clay mixture. Eucalyptus plantations are ubiquitous in this part of the
country and there seems to be a huge market for all parts of the tree, especially
for charcoal and construction materials. The attraction of eucalyptus is that
it regenerates quickly, putting out new shoots when a tree is felled. New marketable
wood is available from the same tree every 3 to 4 years. And it grows just
about anywhere. The dark side of eucalyptus is that it poisons the soil, sucks
up every drop of moisture, and does not allow the growth of any other vegetation
around it. Prices for eucalyptus are falling and farmers are beginning to
understand that it is just not worth it to grow eucalyptus anymore. But it is
very hard, long work to uproot and prepare the ground for other uses.
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Mesfin and I at road lunch |
We had a couple of very pleasant stops to stretch our
legs again along the journey and one sort of funny stop for lunch in a small
town on the way. They had very good food, Shiro wot (chickpea gravy) and tebs
(pan-fried little pieces of beef) on injera. But it was next to impossible to
convince them to produce a receipt for our lunch (which we needed to claim
expenses on this work trip). We finally arrived at Debre Marcos around 4 pm,
dropped our things in our hotel, and then went to visit the MSCFSO office.
Our partner staff understood the delays in travel and
graciously waited for us after normal office hours. As part of the formal
introductory briefing, Yihenew Demissie, the Programs Manager, walked us
through the wide range of work they do as an organization.
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Yihenew sharing about MSCFSO work |
Migbare Senay
started as a child sponsorship program, supporting orphans and vulnerable
children. Over time, they have added a wide range of food security projects in
the communities around the base of Debre Marcos. MCC (through our back donor
Canadian Foodgrains Bank or CFGB) has particularly supported projects in
watershed rehabilitation and conservation agriculture. Both of these are
climate-smart development approaches to help subsistence farmers scrape a
living from their small acreage in a time of increasing challenge.
The highlands of Ethiopia have been farmed for probably
thousands of years now. The climate is favorable for crops but the soil has
been badly depleted over that time. Traditionally, farmers plow their land up
to 7 times before planting, using a traditional maresha plow drawn by oxen. On the
good side, this leaves the soil soft and easy for planting with few weeds. But violent rain can easily wash away the best topsoil. Erosion gullies are
growing and spreading through once-productive hillsides.
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Plowing next to a massive gully |
In addition, there are
big problems with finding natural fertilizers. Farmers own cattle and goats. In
the past, manure may have been added to the soil to make up for fertility loss.
But these days, due to deforestation, there is not enough firewood available to
support cooking needs. So all cow manure is saved and dried into flat pies to
use as fuel. This competition for natural fertilizers means nothing is left for
the fields.
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Cooking fuel: cow manure stacked in pies |
On Tuesday morning, we went to visit communities around the
Kosso Amba and Tibteb watersheds, and look at the problems and what is being done
to restore the land. A few years ago, farmers were completely giving up on
farming this land and were migrating out of the area in desperation.
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Wawa and the official project signage |
Government
efforts to fix the problems were not working. In 2019, MSCFSO was directed by
the local government to intervene and big changes are now visible in just two
years. We started our visit by climbing a hill between farming fields and an
Orthodox church compound, up to the top of the Kosso Amba watershed. There, we
met 5 members of the community watershed management committee. They talked to
us about how their prospects have now turned around as they have learned about
and implemented ways to restore their land. Watershed rehabilitation goes hand
in hand with learning about how to practice conservation agriculture. Managing
grazing lands by closing some areas is also very important to allow land to
recover, and enforcing area closures is one of the major tasks of the
management committee. Smaller “extra” projects like vermicompost, poultry projects,
forming market aggregate groups, and learning about proper grain storage methods
also have added value to the entire project.  |
Ayenaddis, Tsebay and Anamaw |
And finally, the formation and support
of village savings and loans groups have allowed smallholder farmers access to
credit so that they can finally make ends meet. One woman, Ayenaddis, spoke
about how mothers are the game-changes. “We teach our husbands and our children
different ways to live and do farming to change our land.” All day on Tuesday
we walked through this community and learned about MSCFSO’s holistic methods for
bringing health back to the land and the people.
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new work on a gully, small trees and grasses |
1. Gully restoration.
Year by year, gullies can grow and eat away at productive farmland, taking over
entire hillsides. MSCFSO implements a combination of physical and biological
structures to reclaim gullies and restore them. The physical structures (walls
built of brick or stone, within wire “cages”) stop soil run-off at key points
along a gully.
Acacia trees and other species are planted thickly along the
gully slopes and elephant grass is added at the base of the gully to stabilize
the soil. This requires a lot of manual labor, so there is a “cash for work”
aspect of the project, providing jobs for unemployed young adults. This kind of
work keeps the youth at home to help their families, rather than seeing them
scattered to the big cities in search of work.
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new trees planted in the gully |
2. 2. Area closures.
in the past livestock were allowed to graze freely over fallow fields and open
lands. But when animals clear all the vegetation in an area, it because more
susceptible to devastating erosion. The land on the top of the Tibteb watershed
was nearly barren and riven with gullies. Two years ago, part of the land was
closed and trees were planted. On our visit, we walked through a thick forest
of young trees and glimpsed former gullies that were filling in with vegetation.
The benefits of this closure were now clear to the community. In the past,
rainwater violently gouged away the hillside and was even more destructive at
the bottom of the watershed.
Now rainwater percolates down through a forested
area, and seeps more gently into the watershed below, also offering clean
drinking water. Many of the trees and grasses in the closed area can be cut and
carried back to feed livestock that are kept penned at home.
3. Conservation
agriculture.
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Closed area after 2 years, note the trees and grasses |
There are three main pillars of this style of
agriculture – low (or no) tillage, mulching, and crop rotation. Farmers are
learning to pick the most advantageous aspects of farming this way to maximize
their yields. People are not ready to stop plowing entirely, but new methods
encourage them to plow once and then plant a “green manure” cover crop like
Lupine.
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Lupine |
These nitrogen-fixing plants can grow even in the dry seasons and
improve soil fertility. After flowering, they are plowed into the ground to
increase the biomass of the soil, and farmers immediately plant teff or maize
or potatoes. At harvest time, farmers take the grain and normally would pull
out all the stalks for animal feed. MSCFSO now counsels farmers to “take the
best and leave the rest,” that is, to leave the lower 20 cm stalks of maize or
teff in the ground along with the roots – again, this stabilizes the soil and
provides some natural mulch cover.
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Soil bund with tree lucern and mulched soil |
Additionally, farmers are now aware of how
to protect their fields from erosion with some light terracing. They build soil
bunds – mounds of built-up earth along the downhill edges of their fields – and
plant them with nitrogen-fixing shrubs like Tree Lucerne. This is an amazing plant
that improves the soil, provides fodder material for livestock, flowers for bee
forage, stops erosion, looks pretty, and grows easily. I am now looking to plant
a line of it along the downhill side of our garden!
The payoff of conservation agriculture can
be pretty huge. Potato harvests are about double what they were in the past.
Maize yield increases are also very high. Wheat and teff harvest increases are
not quite as impressive yet – it will take time before the soil recovers enough
to show big changes.
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I got to try plowing -- it was hard! |
4.
4. Vermicompost.
Worms are everywhere on a farm, right? Wrong! We have been shocked to find a massive
shortage of worms in the soil here in Ethiopia, no matter where we look. Yes,
worms used to be a common part of soil ecology, but with soil depletion, the
worms have literally died out. MSCFSO has provided each participating farmer
with 2 kg of worms and a method to propagate
more worms inside special worm compost boxes made of easily available local
materials. It will take time, but each year, farmers will be able to add more
worms and compost to their fields, restoring the soil in another way. Mesfin is very excited to start a worm farm at the bottom of the MCC compound next week.
5. 5. Poultry.
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Raising chickens for eggs |
Another
aspect of the projects has been the distribution of a pair of hens to farming
families to allow them another source of nutrition – eggs – as well as
something to sell if they need to. We visited one family who now had a flock of
a dozen chickens and was able to gather up eggs for sale. Interestingly, the
village market price is still 7 birr per egg, the same as what I sell for in Addis.
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Tsebay's grain storage: Mesfin points to 2 PICS bags |
6. Grain storage and
market aggregate groups. By harvest time, farmers are usually
desperate for cash, having spent all their savings on seeds and fertilizer. Of
course, when everyone harvests at the same time and sells their crops at the
same time, the price of maize or teff is at its lowest point for everyone, and
so farmers get very little profit. But farmers sell at that time anyway, both to get
some money, and also because they worry that if they wait to sell, they will
lose some of the grain to mold or insects or rats. MSCFSO is trying to help
farmers get better prices for their produce by using improved methods of grain
storage.
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Tsebay and his metal storage bin |
PICS bags are the cheapest – big gunny sacks where the grain is sealed
inside triple layers of plastic. There is zero oxygen inside and so all insects
or molds die quickly and the grain is preserved without chemicals. MSCFSO is
also piloting larger metal grain storage bins – also air-tight. These are more
expensive so farmers need to save up to buy them. Farmers are forming aggregate
groups as well, competing for good prices together as a block, rather than
competing against each other. In this way, they can work together to remove the
middleman costs of transport and get more money for their harvests.
7. 7. Village Savings
and Loans Groups. Rural farmers almost never have access to capital
or small loans. VSLAs are an excellent way to band together and help one
another.
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Abiye Wonge savings group |
We talked with five members of one VSLA – they are all neighbors
living near one another. They meet monthly and have very strict rules. Everyone
must contribute 30 birr per month (about 60 cents US). There are fees for being
late or not showing up. But then each can get a loan of up to about $80 USD.
Several men used their loans to buy 4 bags of seed potatoes. At harvest time, three
months later, they were able to sell 22 bags of potatoes, pay off the loan and take home $350 in profit.
One of the women members of the group, a widow with 4 children, normally supports
herself by brewing the local moonshine known as Arakeé.
This year, she used a loan and bought 3 sheep before Easter. She fattened up
the livestock on the grain by-products of her brewing business and sold the
sheep at holiday time for a nice profit. |
Meaza, MSCFSO Gender officer & Jeserosh, VSLA member |
Overall, it was a truly fascinating day of learning about
a whole range of agricultural techniques – I’d been learning about CA for
years since we worked in Burundi and Rwanda. This was my first time seeing
farmers implementing it in Ethiopia. It was also very good to have a quiet time
at lunch to talk with Wawa, Mesfin, and Yihenew about why MSCFSO is able to be
more effective than larger NGOs. It really comes down to locally hired, very
dedicated staff, and a willingness to work on a variety of facets of rural
life, all at the same time. The field staff really take time to listen to
community members, consider their felt needs and requests, and be responsive to
that – they don’t simply impose a program, expect everyone to buy into it, and
then walk away in frustration when the community members resist.
The most immediately successful parts of the project have
been gully rehabilitation. The next steps of this program involve training more
farmers in conservation agriculture because it complements watershed
management perfectly. In addition, there is a lot of nearby degraded land
outside the immediate project area. More communities are asking for help, but
there isn’t a budget for all that cash-for-work gully restoration, so farmers
will need to decide to take care of their own land in the same way that they
see their neighbors doing.
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Mesfin (squatting) coaching on green manure with MSCFO staff team |
My reflections on all this work brought to mind a larger theme: it is so easy to destroy, so hard to rebuild. I see this in small ways. I watch bored David walk around our yard with a hammer, looking for stones and bricks to pound. I think of the occupying forces of the TPLF and how they ransacked hospitals, destroyed water pipes and water storage tanks, and killed off livestock. Buy a gun, walk into a school, and kill 19 children. So easy and cheap to destroy. On the other hand, the work of rebuilding and restoring what has been broken takes time, attention to detail, every square inch of a gully or a broken water pipe. Years of grief counseling. Great patience, lots of money. And between destroying and building, I know which action is imitating the work of our God. I was glad to visit with people who are bearing the image of God in their everyday practical work.
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with the MSCFSO field team |
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Walking break on the drive |
Early on Wednesday morning, we started our journey back
up to Bahir Dar, with planned stops to visit the work of another partner,
Afro-Ethiopia Integrated Development. AIED is our big water partner. They have
a drill rig and a crew of engineers, focused on providing water points for
rural communities that have no good water source.
One major learning for me on this trip was understanding
the high level of cooperation between the regional government of Amhara and a
local NGO like AEID. Here’s an obvious question: How do you decide where to
put a well? Do you dig a well in your favorite village? In a place close to good
roads? In many other countries, decisions like this might be made haphazardly according to ot the whim of the NGO. In the case of Ethiopia, the government takes a strong
coordination role in all development work. With the example of MSCFSO, the government
picked out Kosso Amba as one of the most severely degraded watersheds in a
certain radius.
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Meeting with Durbete officials, well is in the distant background |
With emergency relief work, the government coordinates which
aid agencies send food to which IDP camps. With water projects, the regional government
has a list of rural communities in need of a shallow well, and AEID signs an
agreement with them to provide services there. You might also ask: isn’t it the
job of the government to provide basic infrastructure like water schemes? Well,
yes, it is. But the government is severely limited in its resources. Foreign aid
agencies no longer like to directly fund government entities. And so a lot of
this essential aid work is outsourced to local NGOs which are more directly
accountable to foreign donors.
The first well we visited was an excellent example of
good coordination between AEID and the government. A small community outside
the larger town of Durbete was identified as a place needing a well. But then
the local town government heard of the regional government plan and advocated
to have the well also serve the town. Durbete had a water system built for
about 10,000 people, but now they have a population of about 50,000 – so massive
water shortages all the time. The government looked around in their budget and found money to pay for piping to town, electrical connection for a pump, and
fencing and guarding of the well site. In fact, the government found a budget of
6.6 million ETB to add to the money AEID (MCC) invested in digging the 96 m
well.
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Tree nursery to keep the surrounding green |
Now, an additional 25,000 people will have access to clean drinking water
at this site. We looked around the area of the well – it had been dug and
piping would soon be connected. It was a beautiful forested area; not many
areas are left in such a natural condition in the Amhara region. The government
officials who met us there mentioned that they have now learned how important
it is to protect the natural environment in a 100m radius of the well, in order
to protect the quality and reliability of the water in the well. They will cut
down the few eucalyptus trees in the vicinity, encourage the growth of many other
indigenous trees, and they even have a tree nursery full of juniper and acacia
up and running to fill the remaining empty land with new trees.
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Checkla tebs, photo credit to Wawa |
When we were finished looking at the well site, the five government
officials invited us to join them for lunch back in Durbete. It was very kind
of them and I know my colleagues were very happy to enjoy another meal of
different kinds of meats. In fact, I note here that all the local restaurants
we visited were connected with an outdoor facing butchery shop. The beef is
freshly slaughtered and sliced by the butcher and then grilled by the
restaurant. Or perhaps not grilled, but served raw, according to taste.
Vegetarian options? In this season, not so much.
We visited one more well-site further up the road. This
well was dug about 3 years ago. When the village was chosen, someone needed to be
willing to allow the well to be located on a piece of private property. No one
was keen to do this except for an older couple, Meke Babil and his wife Abebaye
Mengist. They now live right next door to the pump and are keepers of the key.
They normally open the pump in the morning and the evening. But when someone
shows up needing water in the middle of the day, they are available to unlock
it (the pump handle is locked to make sure it is properly used).
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Meke and Abebaye |
This couple
was incredibly cheerful, full of jokes and smiles. They had taken advantage of
all the wet ground around the well, planting lots of herbs, flowers, and banana
trees. They very kindly invited us to walk around their yard and visit the old
well, then invited us into their home for something to eat. We were each given
a plate of injera topped with a pile of Aib (a kind of cheese+butter+spices).
Abebaye is also a brewer and insisted that I have a sip of her arakeé,
which reminded me a lot of the strong cognac I had to sip on occasion when I
was an exchange student in the USSR. This was the end of our official field
visiting and so then we continued on north to get our flight back to Addis that
evening.
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Abebaye's brewing set up |
We had one more meal with Wawa back at home at almost 9
pm – Paul had done an excellent job of holding down the fort back at home, even
with the challenge of having no water on the compound since the Sunday before
we left. Wawa left early Thursday morning and then we had a day in the office
to catch up on email, enjoy a grueling Amharic lesson, and try to get the
household back to normal when the city water came flowing back.
On Friday, I decided that it was a high priority to take
a personal day. That’s something I have realized I need to do twice a month in
order to keep an even keel in this assignment. In 2014, when we returned from
our Burundi/Rwanda work, I was pretty burned out. I learned the
importance of honoring God’s commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it
holy. In Tanzania, my workload was light enough for most of our 4 years that
it was easy to take school hours on one day a week and have time for rest and
prayer. But since moving to Ethiopia, I have felt that we are going flat out,
all the time. This is a huge program, with lots of big projects and new
emergency projects rolling in and out all the time. There is always an urgent
need to be in the office, reviewing proposals, moving money, meeting partners, etc.
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The view from our urban garden, where we often try to imagine that we are enjoying a peaceful sunset |
On top of a heavy workload, Addis is not exactly a
restful place. It is a big city, with lots of traffic and at any given time, 2
or 3 people of different faith confessions praying loudly over PA systems. I
feel like my body is constantly dealing with noise and I’m sure that it raises
one’s cortisol levels to constantly be subconsciously filtering out so many
auditory stimuli. One of the best surprises about being in the field (literally)
last week was the time to enjoy the silence. No radios, no loudspeakers, just
the sound of the wind and birds and a few farmers calling to each other. It was
restful in and of itself to be in a quiet place, and that’s impossible in Addis.
Also, we have the privilege of working at the office right
in our compound, so we do not have to deal with a daily commute in crazy
traffic. I am thankful for that! But that also means that our home is also our place of work and there
are lots of comings and goings. In theory, Paul and I are sharing a position
that is 1.5 FTE, so we each should work less than full-time. But it is hard to
stay home and rest on a workday, when all around you, people are busy working,
including making and eating team lunch in our house.
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A little place of respite |
A few months ago, I was approached by our congregation to
join the volunteer Pastoral Team. I was really conflicted about this. On the
one hand, I am already way too busy and was not finding the time to pray and
have a good perspective on our life and work. On the other hand, the more I
prayed about it, I was confronted by the fact that I am an ordained person. I
can’t ever walk away from my call to pastoral ministry. I will not be
functioning as a whole person, who God created me to be if I am not also
participating in shepherding the church when I am called to do that. God’s
answer in prayer: attend to Sabbath, with time to listen, time in solitude, and
it will all come together. I am trying to trust that this will be true. Of
course, in order to find peace, rest, and solitude, I have found that I need to
leave the compound. I’ve had a few days so far where I take a taxi across town,
pay for the pool entrance at the Sheraton, and take a day of rest. It’s always good
for me to start Sabbath with physical movement, and since I can’t safely walk
alone in the woods anywhere here, a long swim is also helpful. Another
advantage of this pool garden is its comfortable lounge beds. A nap, if needed,
is really important on a day of rest, but where can you go in a public space
and take a nap? Napping in a restaurant or coffee shop, or even a big public
park is pretty weird and risky. But lots of people nap around a pool, so it’s
not that strange for me to join them. I’ve found a quiet upper corner of the
pool garden where I can sit under a tree, read, pray, journal, nap, maybe order
a macchiato, and take stock of life. Hopefully, I can then return home to be a
wife, mother, colleague, and pastor with a better frame of mind. The challenge is
to preserve those days against the relentless press of the urgent.
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Opening the bid box at 3:30 sharp, Wonde, Mesfin, Solomon and I |
So back at home/office, our big news this week is that we
were finally able to sell two old cars, a Corolla and an old Landcruiser. These
cars were purchased by MCC back in the 80s. The cars were in primary school
when our accountant was born. They are OLD!! And yet, with 300% duty on new
cars, even an ancient vehicle is still valuable in Ethiopia. As an NGO, we had to
follow elaborate procedures to make sure that there is no corruption in selling
our assets: 2 weeks of advertising, people coming to purchase the right to bid,
etc. Finally, Tuesday was the day. The bidding closed at 3 pm sharp. Unfortunately,
one of our acquaintances arrived at 3:05 with his bid and we had to turn him
down in order to not violate the law. At 3:30 pm, the bid box was opened with a
crowbar and the 3 bids were removed, envelopes unsealed, details recorded and
photos taken for an official record. Thanks be to God we had 1 bid for the Landcruiser
and 2 for the Corolla, so both cars are officially sold. About five official
documents had to be drafted,signed, and stamped, minutes taken in English and Amharic, and verified. But we have money in the bank for the big car and it was driven
out of the yard yesterday. Hopefully, the funds for the Corolla will arrive by
Monday, and if the buyer reneges, we get to keep the 20% deposit.
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David on Formal Friday |
On the home front, Oren has been home for the past two
weeks with a lull in his A-level exam schedule. He has two more Chemistry exams
remaining (May 31 and June7). In between, he has enrolled in an online American
Literature course. He needs one more year of English credit in order to
fulfill most college admissions requirements, and no space in his tough A-level
schedule next school year to fit it in. Hopefully, he will manage his time, stay on track, and
get this course done by September or so.
David has also had a week of final
exams. He’s almost finished with them now and ready for school to be over next
Friday. I was glad that he was ready to participate in one of the Spirit days,
Formal Friday, dressing up nicely in his old St. Cons uniform! Imagine that if
we would have stayed in Tanzania, he would have looked that sharp every day!
A few bonus photos:
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Mesfin helps to pump for a neighbor |
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Textures inside a home |
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Beautiful young cows, being fattened at home |
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Arakee apparatus |
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A Savings group member talking about potato profits |
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children observing us as we talk with their parents |
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Remaining, unrestored land of Tibteb watershed |
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Farming on the edge |
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Two watershed management committee members, Anelay & Mesgan MSCFSO staff in the background |
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An African Oriole at Bahir Dar |