The view from Afar

Asiyah's home area

On Monday afternoon, my colleague Mesfin Mathewos joined me on a long-postponed visit to the Afar region. MCC has been partnering with a local NGO there – Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA) – over the past 18 years, mostly providing emergency relief grants. The last MCC visit had been in October 2020, right as the conflict in the north had started. Since that time, war and instability had made it very difficult to travel into Afar. Nevertheless, we had been able to support an APDA project providing emergency shelter to displaced families back in September and October. Throughout the months of violence, APDA has never stopped working and trying to respond to people in crisis.

This was the first time either Mesfin or I had visited this Eastern part of the Horn of Africa, and it is quite a unique region. Hot and dry, with active volcanos and lava flows in some areas, this land holds a wealth of rocks, but appears to be depleted of much else.

APDA minivan

When we arrived in the late afternoon, a beat-up old mini-van stood waiting for us outside the gates of the tiny airport, flying a small tattered white flag reading “APDA” – in a war zone, it’s wise to clearly identify yourself as a humanitarian organization. I got into the front seat as instructed and reached for my seat belt,  and the first words I heard were, “Oh, the seat belt doesn’t work. Welcome to Afar!” This opening gave us a taste of how people deal with life in a very difficult environment. Our host and project coordinator, Valerie Browning, was completely swamped managing another visiting donor and ongoing relief distributions. So, we went to our hotel and agreed to start our official visit early in the morning.

We drove down off the escarpment where the planned regional capital, Semera, has been planted, down into the Awash river basin area. It was still arid and empty, but along the edges of the submerged river, the real commercial center, Logia, sprawled in an organic sort of mess. Apparently, this was where most people lived and then took the 6 km commute into the capital. A small community of traditional Afar homes was scattered around the empty basin in between – they had moved there five years earlier, attracted by the market for their milk. One had to be careful about goats and camels wandering into the road from the homesteads. Our guesthouse was at the other end of the commercial strip of Logia town. It was not overly charming, but it was cheap, and the rooms were clean with overhead fans.

Coffee stop in Mille

Afar people groups are culturally Muslim and more related to Arabic and Somali peoples than to the highlanders of central Ethiopia. Women wear long, loose dresses with headscarves – thankfully I had asked a Somali friend from church for help in finding two Muslim dresses, so I was prepared there. But I tell you, straight Western hair is no good for keeping headscarves on one’s head! I just could not figure it out. The most typical clothing for men is an ankle-length tube of cloth, like a sarong, knotted and belted at the waist. I was reminded of the lungis that men wear in Bangladesh, and it seems a very sensible kind of clothing for a very hot climate.  Mesfin and I had a simple dinner in the hotel restaurant and then went to get some rest before a long travel day on Tuesday.

At dawn, a driver came to pick us up and take us back to the APDA office at Semera. Along the way, we collected Mr. Ismail Ali Gardo, the founder of APDA and husband of Valerie, along with another guest and staff members. It was great to start talking a bit with Ismail, as we sat in the back with the German guest. The three of us “foreigners” were all dutifully wearing our Covid masks, but when we got to the office, we realized that no one else was masking. Valerie even asked, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?” it was very clear that there would be no way to clearly communicate or interact with people in Afar with masks on! In any case, we were in the open air with plenty of wind all the time.

Over a simple, delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with fresh green chili and tomato, we heard some recent stories from Ismail about their struggles to keep going with their work amid ongoing war in Afar. By the middle of December 2021, the invading Tigrayan military forces had pretty much all retreated into Tigray. However, in mid-December they started fresh attacks on the northern part of Afar. It seems that the political leaders in Tigray would really like to continue the conflict, perhaps to gain bargaining power with the Ethiopian government. Perhaps they think they can still block the main road between the port of Djibouti and the capital, Addis. Whatever their reasoning, for the past month, the Tigrayan military have been attacking communities northwestern Afar, firing rockets and heavy artillary to attack Afar civilians below them. The war is over in other parts of Ethiopia, but for the Afar, it is only getting worse. The Afar special forces are the only defense force deployed in that area and they are massively outgunned. The federal military has elected not to get involved, for whatever reason. The TPLF are continuing to claim that the Ethiopian government is deliberately blockading needed food, medicine and fuel, and preventing aid from reaching the Tigrayan people. And it is very true that citizens of Tigray are suffering greatly right now. What the TPLF leaders fail to mention is that supplies were reaching Tigray for a brief time, until the TPLF themselves turned the access route to Tigray into a new battlefield. And thus, 400,000 Afar citizens have now been newly displaced since January. That’s on top of the 2.5 million Ethiopians who were displaced by the conflict in Amhara, Tigray and Afar between July and December 2021.

Govt loaner truck, fully loaded

About three weeks ago, APDA sent three trucks (including one very big open truck for large deliveries) up to bring emergency supplies to people displaced by the fighting. Along the way, the vehicles on this main road were stopped at a military checkpoint. It turned out to be TPLF. It quickly became clear that these vehicles were about to be seized. Two of the drivers fled for their lives and walked for six days to get back to Semera. There is still no word from the third driver. In addition, APDA has an associated social enterprise that has been doing water point construction. They had a working rig to dig shallow wells. This was also intercepted and badly damaged by TPLF forces. It turns out that insurance will cover loss or damage to your vehicle if you crash – but not when your vehicle is damaged or lost in war. Ismail is fighting this but is not optimistic. Thankfully, the government and the association of local NGOs recognize the unique work APDA does, and each has given APDA a loaner truck so that emergency aid can still get out to the people who need it.

Mats in the APDA warehouse

It took a while before a vehicle was ready to take us out together with the emergency focal point officer Osman Challow. Our mission on Tuesday was to go visit some of the Afar people who had been displaced by the fighting, with homes destroyed, and who had received emergency shelters from APDA (through MCC funding). Because APDA is so integrated into the Afar community and culture, they recognized that the plastic shelters traditionally distributed to IDPs (internally displaced people) would not be suitable at all. Plastic easily rips and breaks down under the harsh desert sun and wind and does not provide cool protection during the day. By contrast, a shelter made of 6 traditional palm mats is waterproof, windproof, easily portable for the nomadic lifestyle, and much cooler under the sun. Furthermore, a traditional daboyta house can last up to 10-15 years. Her well-built daboyta is an Afar woman’s pride and joy, the home she built with her female relatives when she married, so the loss of her house is devastating. Receiving a new house is a practical necessity. But it also restores an Afar woman to dignity and is the first step to recovery after loss and trauma.

Main cargo road, Awash river in the distance

Our journey that day followed the route that the delivery of palm mats would have taken from the warehouse at the APDA compound in Semera. We drove through Logia and up onto the rocky escarpment that overlooks the Awash river basin. It is so strange to be in a desolate place and then look down on all that water, gathered in lakes, flowing north from its long course through the Oromia region. It might have made good farmland, but unfortunately, rainy season flooding makes the land along the river far too dangerous for settlement. We continued along this main road which connects Djibouti with Addis, passing lots of double container trucks and fuel trucks struggling up the curving hills. The asphalt on our side of the road was clearly degraded and worn down by heavy loads; by contrast, the lane heading back to Semera was in decent shape (used by empty trucks heading back to port). We stopped briefly in the little town of Mille so our driver Hassan could get a cup of coffee. In the tea house next door, a young man was unrolling banana leaves and proudly displaying leafy bundles to the customers: chat. Addiction to chat is a huge problem in the Eastern regions of Ethiopia; people chew the leaves and get a high similar to cocaine, with lots of energy, courage, and stamina for the hard work they must do. But it ruins their teeth, is expensive, and if they don’t get it every day, they can get very sick. It’s not an illegal drug and seemed to be available everywhere we went over our two days. A very strange phenomenon.

Chat salesman at the coffee house

Another 20 kilometers down the road, we came to a major turn-off: here was the junction of the road leading to Mekele, Tigray. Capturing this place had been the dream of the TPLF in October: cut off the main road to Djibouti, stop fuel supplies, strangle Addis, and Abiy’s government will fail. At the military checkpoint, we were questioned closely about what we were doing and where we were going. Most of the federal police knew about APDA (they are the biggest NGO in the region), but they were nervous about letting me enter the area. Other foreigners had entered, taken photos, and posted things on Facebook. Finally, our APDA contact assured them that this was just a monitoring visit and that I would behave myself. I couldn’t take so many photos after that.

Our next landmark was the former site of a camp for displaced people. It was now abandoned, but the evidence was everywhere. Honestly, the place was trashed, with the packaging of emergency supplies strewn far and wide: enriched porridge packets, soap sleeves, sanitary pads, and used water bottles littered the ground. Here and there, we found small thorny acacia bushes with their tops laced together for makeshift shelters. A few wooden shelter frames remained. The only permanent structure was a tiny government health dispensary, which had probably served as the anchor for the camp. Challow told us that an estimated 1200 families had sheltered here: 64,000 people! Many with their animals.  He had been part of an effort to gather some of the children under the shade of trees a few times a week to give them “school” and take their minds off the trauma of being ripped from home and having to live in such awful circumstances.

TPLF fortifications

Another 40 km down the road we reached the first signs of war: a former TPLF camp. We got out of the car to have a look at the trenches and fortifications. Finally, here was a “good” use for all these rocks. Small shallow man-made foxholes dotted the landscape, little rocky parentheses built about two feet high and just wide enough to perhaps shield a man (or woman) lying on their belly from flying bullets. As we kept driving, I was filled with pity for the young people in armies on all sides who had desperately crawled behind these barriers, trying not to die.  The foxholes became more and more frequent, evidence of battles to take and retake this section of road.

local restaurant kitchen in Chifra

Our next stop was the town of Chifra, where bullets and munitions had rained down last year. There were a few flattened houses and pockmarked buildings. We were getting closer and closer to the rough and mountainous region between Amhara and Afar. Heavy fighting had engulfed this whole area as the TPLF tried to take territory leading to the main road, and Afar militias fought back. We grabbed a quick bite of lunch there. Mesfin and I squatted on low stools and shared a round plate of injera with a pool of Shiro wot in the middle (spicy chickpea gravy).

Several of the foxholes on the hill

And then we continued along the road heading north into Woldia (Amhara) until the turnoff onto a dirt road into Uwwa district. Here we could clearly see where powerlines still stood but had been cut and destroyed in many places. There has been no power here since August. We passed a few different school buildings. It was a school day, but the schools were half destroyed, and understandably deserted. All these were signs that this area was liberated, but very little is back to normal yet. We briefly passed through the administrative town of Uwwa to pick up the local APDA extension worker, along with a government officer. Both wore sarong-like skirts and curved knives at their waists and were indistinguishable from the rest of the community members. One of the great strengths of APDA as an organization is that they have at least three local staff in each administrative region. They are deeply connected to the communities where they work, and accountable to the council of Afar clan leaders. 

We took a rough road out of town and soon were passing an area where long rows of evenly spaced foxholes formed contour lines across a gentle hillside. At the center of the battlefield was a school, currently still abandoned. I have visited historic battlefields – Gettysburg and Jamestown – but there is something deeply chilling about a battlefield that overtook living people’s homesteads just last year.

A temporary grass daboyta

We needed to get to a family living on the other side of the school and ended up following a tiny foot track over extremely rocky ground. I didn’t know Land Cruisers could do what ours did. I would have been happy to get out and walk, but the driver seemed particularly courageous and frisky in the afternoon…

Finally, we reached a gathering of four compounds, enclosed by low rock walls, each with several daboyta houses inside, along with smaller enclosures for animals with higher walls, and tiny rock barns to protect the youngest lambs from hyenas. A few young women, with colorful tops and beautifully braided hair, greeted us quietly and allowed us to look inside their homes.  

Old mats and even shirts on shelter outside

Some of the houses were built of grass, tightly bound, and held down with twine, and more conical in shape. Apparently, grass houses are a stopgap measure when there are no other housing materials available. Grass is fine for the dry season – it keeps out the sun and wind. But it is not waterproof and not portable for when the family needs to move to find new pasture for their goats. A few of the round traditional houses were now covered with a mixture of the new palm mats, along with older, partially burned mat sheets and pieces of clothing. One man explained that they were getting ready to send some of the family off to better pasture and would send most of the new mats with those people for shelter. For now, they were making do with three mats instead of six. The other three were rolled up ready to move.

Oloyta mattress    

To enter a daboyta, one needs to stoop very low – going on hands and knees might even be better if it weren’t so dusty – and wriggle in through a narrow hole. You can’t enter someone else’s house standing and with pride, that’s for sure. Inside it is tall enough to stand up, and amazing to see the intricate way that sticks are woven together to form a strong frame. The newest mats are placed on the inside layer of the house and older mats form the outside, allowing the new mats to cure and become waterproof. Smoke from the inside cooking fire naturally coats the inside of the house and helps to repel insects.

Challow came into the house with us and invited us to look at the one undamaged traditional mattress or oloyta the family was left with. Very thin, straight sticks are bound together with leather in beautiful simple patterns. The mattress is easily rolled up and transportable and sits on a rough framework about 30 cm off the ground. They are very expensive to buy: 5000 birr or about $100.

As we moved from house to house, we heard the story of what had happened to this family. I had an assignment to interview one of the women who had received shelter mats, to hear her story and share it with people in North America. (MCC Canada is busy preparing a podcast focused on Ethiopia, to be released in March). Asiyah Mohammed Hellem agreed to speak with us and have her picture taken.

Asiyah (center) giving an interview,
her children around her

Sometime at the end of July, in the middle of the night, a huge piece of ordinance exploded just a dozen meters from one of the compounds, probably shot from a big gun or a tank in the hills above the household. The men pulled the remains of this munitions out and showed us—I don’t know really what I was looking at, being a pacifist, but it looked terrible. The sound and shock sent the family fleeing in the middle of the night. No one had expected this. They ran on foot for a while. At some point they realized that they had to go back for their animals. But by that point, some had run away and were lost; others had been taken by hyenas in the night; only a few were left. When the family had taken what they could carry, they walked probably 90 km east into a remote grazing valley. They had nothing, they were hungry, they had no shelter, and it was a time of heavy rains. I was thinking of that long day when it was pouring rain at the end of August, pushing through reviewing the grant proposal that would release the money to buy the needed shelters.

Asiyah, family and APDA staff

Asiyah, her husband and 5 children stayed in the Geega grazing valley for four months while their home site was a battlefield. There was no vehicle access to that area, and military was swarming around the whole region and so APDA was not able to get the mats to the people in need until November. By that time, Asiyah and her extended family had made their way back home. When they arrived, they found things totally destroyed. As in most places, shelter mats were ripped from houses and burned, cut in pieces, or used to cover trenches and armaments for protection and camouflage. Oloyta mattresses were slashed apart – for no apparent reason. Even the inside contents of the homes were totally looted. Food was taken, cooking pots taken. I heard this story from another destitute woman: “They even took my clothes. Who would want my clothes?” TPLF soldiers did not appreciate the security risk of having anything moving in the landscape, and so many, many camels were simply shot. The Afar people we talked to live constantly in hardship, on the edge of disaster, with barely enough to eat. They must walk four hours round trip to fetch drinking water from the Uwwa river. To have the cruelty of war sweep over them because of other people’s quest for political power seems like a double crime.

Asiyah Mohammed Hellem

I had been asked to get a smiling picture of the woman who gave me the interview. Asiyah was not a woman who smiled. Her face is very thin and lined. She has five children, mostly daughters. She has seen them hungry. She has seen them terrified and running in the dark. She has seen them dripping wet and cold with no way to find shelter or get warm. Even now, back at home, their animals are suffering without pasture. The goats are not healthy enough to produce milk and so there is no milk for protein for her family.  There is no market to sell the goats and at least get some money: the border to Tigray (their usual route to market) is completely cut off. Even now the future looks desolate. Smiling is not her reality.

Shells that fell near the compound

We left the family as the sun was beginning to sink in the sky and headed back to Uwwa town to leave the two local officials there and restock on drinking water (our third liter of the day). Osman Challow accompanied us as far as Chifra where he had to stay the night to prepare for another distribution of shelter mats the next day (another donor had followed MCC’s lead in this relief effort). At that point, our driver offered to take us a longer way back to Semera to show us a road with a lot more evidence of the destruction of war. It felt weird to ask to be shown burned out vehicle carcasses and places where many young people had lost their lives. We declined and returned the way we had come. It was late when we got back to our hotel, so Mesfin and I had a quick supper and then got some rest.

Newly rebuilt houses for IDPs near Uwwa

Wednesday in Semera was quieter. A younger driver, Ali, picked us up in the morning and it turned out he is francophone, having been born and raised in Djibouti. He attended Lycée in Paris but hated living the isolated, cold, depressing life of an African in Europe and so he came back home to Afar to live near his relatives. It was fun and challenging to follow his rapid Parisian accent and learn a little more about the ways that Afar people are spread across this part of the Horn of Africa. Valerie was already at the office when we arrived but was happy to join us for a cup of coffee while we had eggs and bread outside. Apparently, she always gets to the office around 6 am and doesn’t leave until at least 7 pm. We began to understand why: around 8:30 am a shifting tide of people begin to flow into the office, take up every available desk and chair, plan, chat, ask for signatures, work on whatever computer was available. Valerie has a lot to do in writing proposals and preparing reports, and the only focused time she can find is during the low human tide before and after normal work hours. It was also fascinating to note that desks, computers, and chairs did not seem to follow a private property model but were more aligned with the cultural reality of public grazing land.

baby goat houses

Our task for the day was to gain a better understanding of the problem of fodder shortages. We had an hour with Valerie and another hour with two young veterinarians to talk and ask questions. For the pastoralist communities of the Afar region, “goats are everything.” Goats provide nutrition (meat and milk), cash for items Afar people can’t make themselves like clothes or pots, and insurance for difficult times. In the past, milk from goats and cattle was the staple source of nutrition and protein for nomadic families, along with wheat for bread or porridge. Meat was an occasional source of food in the past. However, in the past 20 years, droughts in Afar have become more the rule than the exception. Where there used to be four rainy seasons in a year, there are now only two, and they have become more unpredictable, accompanied by extreme weather, flooding, and lightning. Locusts have become a big problem. The man-made crisis of the Ethiopia conflict over the past 15 months has only exacerbated the problems of a difficult life for Afar people, with destruction of property, herds, displacement, and massive food insecurity (90% of people need food aid right now).

camels and foxholes along the road

As a result of these extended periods of emergency, the animal herds of Afar people have been decimated. The remaining animals are unhealthy and susceptible to disease. In past years, Afar people were used to milk production going down for a few months at a time. Now they pass 7-8 months with low fodder availability and no milk production. The health impacts for children are devastating, with perhaps 70% severe malnutrition and stunting among children in remote areas, because the only food they have is wheat, without any protein or other nutritional supplements.

Ismail, Fatuma (APDA board member) and
the new farm guard

One potential way to solve the problem of a lack of pasture in times of drought is to provide nutritious, compact animal fodder. Currently, there is no local animal feed production plant in the region. Animal fodder is produced in other parts of Ethiopia, but the cost of transportation to Afar makes it too expensive for local community members to buy. APDA is investigating the feasibility of establishing the first fodder production plant in the region to try to meet these needs for a sustainable food source for animals. Despite the arid environment of much of the region, animal fodder inputs are available from the arable land along the Awash river near Logia. APDA even bought 26 hectares of land at a water point to use for planting fodder crops. Ismail took us to visit that plot and see several existing buildings in Logia, which could be converted by an APDA-supported social enterprise to house a fodder production facility. Transport of crop residue and other inputs would not be expensive over just a few kilometers.

Camel caravan on the way back

It has been very difficult to convince outside donors to consider animal fodder as a basic need to maintain the Afar people’s life. People always say – why would we feed the animals when the people are hungry? But as we talked with Valerie, Ismail, and their staff, we saw how they connect the dots. If animals begin to starve in drought times, they don’t produce milk and they don’t fetch a good price in the market. Children lack adequate nutrition and have stunted growth which impairs them for the rest of their lives. There is not even enough money to buy grain if there is no good market for goats. Afar people then become destitute, without animals and hope for the future, completely dependent on handouts. On the other hand, if pastoralists can buy locally produced inexpensive animal fodder, they can keep their goats alive through hard times, their children have milk for nutrition, the children can enjoy normal development, people and animals stay healthier and families are sustained.

We are hoping to commission an expert feasibility study to make sure this idea of a local fodder production plant would really work. And after that, we would like to help APDA find the funding to make this a reality. So, in the afternoon I worked more with Valerie to develop a term of reference for that study.

Market in Logia

I was able to fit in one other task in the afternoon. Donor relations in Canada will be sharing more about the crisis in Ethiopia and inviting people there to help contribute to recovery. We will be highlighting the distribution of shelter mats as one example of MCC interventions, and so our contact in Canada really wanted a sample mat. Ali the Francophone driver picked me up and took me to the local market in the back alleys of Logia. We entered through a shaded narrow lane where a line of vendors displayed bundles of chat. A handful of goats loitered nearby trying to munch any cast-off twigs. Ovine addicts? The back lane was a typically beautiful market, with colorful Muslim dresses fluttering in the wind. One item for sale that I had never seen before: a traditional butter storage unit made from a whole eviscerated young goat, puffed up like a hairy balloon, each tiny leg knotted closed. Apparently, butter stays edible for a long time in one of those.  Only a few vendors were selling the traditional woven palm mats, but we found a decent one for a decent price, thanks to the haggling of Ali.

Mat successfuly acquired

I had a few more hours back at the APDA office, working on relevant documents, beside Valerie as she worked. The tide of people quietly ebbed away, the sun slanted low, and Valerie took a call from a security professional looking for inside information on the conflict in Afar. The guy was very concerned about the well-being of 4000 Tigrayans who had been brought to Semera from up north by the government. Were these people being detained or mistreated? The full story emerged from Valerie: Many Tigrayans have traditionally lived in Afar, running restaurants and businesses. There has never been enmity until now. But 77 Afar were killed by the TPLF in a certain community. The Afar community leaders were worried about retaliation and revenge on ordinary Tigrayan citizens, and so they recommended that these people be evacuated. They are currently being well looked after, provided with food, and supplies in temporary housing. But, Valerie said, what about the 400,000 Afar people who have had to flee up north and don’t have anyone to look after them so well? Why aren’t foreigners concerned about them?

The government loaner truck was waiting in the yard, loaded up with food and blankets purchased that day with the combined contributions of many, many individual donors (mostly diaspora Ethiopians). The truck would roll out the next morning, headed north. The staff of APDA seem prepared to work tirelessly, 6 days a week, to make sure relief is getting where it needs to go – because who else is so well connected to do it? But they would love to see a day soon when the focus can be on recovery and stabilizing a devasted community.

On Thursday morning, Mesfin and I had a last quick breakfast to bid farewell to Valerie and some of her staff and then Ali drove us to the airport to head back to Addis.

I’m keeping this blog focused on what we’re doing in work; we’ll have another one soon to wrap up what’s been going on in our personal life. But I hope that the view from Afar has given some additional perspective on a very complicated situation in Ethiopia.

Bonus pictures:

 

 

Our 200 km journey west to Uwwa area

Hills on the western Afar border with Amhara

Inside a daboyta

Track to Asiyah's homestead

The former IDP site

 

Cured frame inside a daboyta with new mats

 

 

Cooking fire inside a daboyta

During the interview