" I will never go back to that place!" A sentiment echoed by nearly everyone I spoke to. The context is a recent field visit to Dabat IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. Temeskin, the 12 year old boy in the picture was someone I interviewed. He told me about his harrowing escape from Tigray with his mother and 4 siblings. His father is a soldier with the TPLF, and since his mother is Amhara, they, like all the Amhara in and around their homes were threatened with violence, many of their friends and neighbors were raped and murdered. When I asked him if he hoped to return someday, his otherwise sunny disposition turned dark and he said, "I will never go back to that place, --full of dead bodies!"
I have just returned yesterday from a 4 day trip in northern Amhara region and Gondar to visit projects we have in those areas. The trip comes after a recent return from our Djibouti vacation last week. Rebecca will be providing some highlights about that in a future post, but the current week is so full it needs to be documented while it is still fresh.
Our arrival back to Addis on Saturday was a reunion with some visitors who were passing through, including Rose, the former MCC Rep. Rose was on her way out, and Neil, a colleague and friend from Arusha, was here to do some trainings for partners here on conservation agriculture. He and I had both planned to travel north later that week. Since his trainings were happening in advance of my planned visits, he left on Monday by plane to Bahir Dar to join our technical team who were traveling by car to their final destination--Debre Marcos see work with one of our partners.
I stayed in Addis with Rebecca on Monday through Wednesday which felt like a mad dash to get through stacks of time-sensitive emails for disbursement of grants and submissions of new concept papers, as well as our annual audit which was ongoing at that time. I felt like we were racing the clock as I was planning to leave myself into the field to visit two projects where our colleagues were heading after the training with Neil.
I left on Thursday afternoon and took a flight to Bahir Dar, about an hour away. One good thing I can say about Ethiopia, is that Ethiopian Airlines offers excellent local travel services. They have many daily flights to most major cities which reduces travel time from 12 hours driving to about 50 minutes flying. I met Mesfin our food security coordinator and Wondeweson our logistics officer at the airport in Bahir Dar and stayed the night at a hotel there. They had just arrived from Debre Marcos, about 4 hours to the south. I did appreciate the sacrifice they were making bringing the LandCruiser up to meet Neil in Debre Marcos then continuing on to see me. Their entire trip for them would take 8 days.
Bahir Dar is a nice town, set up to be touristy (although since the conflict and COVID there is no tourism that I could see.) It is on lake Tana, a large lake in the north of the country. We had a pleasant evening at the hotel we were staying in, then left the next morning.
We had a full day planned with visits to 4 well sites and waterpoints put in by our partner AEID who had been working extensively in the region to provide access to fresh water to many communities in several woredas near Bahir Dar.
These visits are always interesting. At a completed water point, we can see large groups fetching water, and hear reports from the water committee about how much it has changed the life of the community. Women are often saved many hours of walking and several reported that the change had allowed their daughters to attend school as they are no longer needed to help fetch water.
If the well is not done, there is a huge drilling rig at the site and watching them bore a one to two hundred meter hole is impressive. At all sites, community members are very keen to 'show respect' a ritual of gratitude which involves gorging us as much as possible on food provided by the community. I have mixed feelings about this in terms of 'checking privilege'. It feels uncomfortable for me a rich person to have food lavished on me by those who are much poorer. But like the woman who breaks the expensive bottle of nard on Jesus' feet, I think it is important to understand the symbolic act as ritual and its function in their culture--not to judge it with a western utilitarian/pragmatic mindset.
Each of the four of us visiting were given huge plates with several enjera the size of pizza shells. This was covered with potato sauce (dinnich wet) and dried fava beans. Then I was given 4 hard boiled eggs, a huge helping of local creamed cheese mixed with berberri (ground chili). They wanted to pile on more but I politely declined. Then they brought me a pint of raw milk filled to overflowing in one glass, and another full glass of sweet yoghurt that they added beriberi to as well. Other drinks included T'alla, a local mead beverage, and areke, a locally made brandy. This was all followed by coffee.
Doing one of these meals is challenging, but it takes extremely persuasive diplomacy to keep us from having to eat this at every community waterpoint we visit--without giving offense. The last group we saw really wanted us to stay for lunch. (like the last meal an hour before was a light snack!)
We left the well sites in the early afternoon and headed north to the town of Gondar in region by the same name. The land around there is mountainous and fertile (although it is the dry season). Lots of recently harvested wheat and teff fields blanket the land.
Gondar is a historic town with buildings that date to the 15th century when Fideles one of the most important Kings of Gondar lived. The historic landmark in the middle of town has 7 castles on it--each of his descendants who became King built another. Although the Italians bombed the site in WWII much of it is preserved. We came into town in the early evening and had a chance for a quick tour before dark.
We stayed in a hotel (amusingly called the Florida Hotel). It even had a very nice pool (though I had neither time nor swimsuit.) We stayed the night then started again midmorning to head north to two towns where there are several refugee and IDP camps, one is Dabat the other is Debark. These towns are close to the border with Tigray and many Amhara people who were living in Tigray during the war were forced to flee south and ended up in these camps as internally displaced persons.
My reason for visiting is that our partner, MSCFSO is running an emergency project funded by MCC to provide food supplementation (Famix) to pregnant and lactating women (PLWs) and children under 5, to prevent malnutrition in the camp.
We arrived mid-morning. This is not the first refugee camp I have visited and as I anticipated, there were many neat rows of large 'tent-like' shelters set up by UNHCR or IOM with logos emblazoned on the tarps that make up the shelters. There are well-organized areas for school, latrines, an area for playing football and volleyball. There were also, set up that day, many gunny sacks of famix and flour ready for distribution to the IDPs who get a fixed ration from UNHCR.
When we pull our LandCruiser in the gate, we are met by many happy or at least amused children who follow us around while we inspect the food distribution site, the health post, latrines, and other areas of the camp. We take time for extensive discussion with the local govt officials, project managers, then the IDP coordinating committee (made up of IDPs who govern themselves.) We interviewed several beneficiaries.
The stories we hear are heartbreaking, nearly everyone in the camp is Amhara, who was living in Tigray when the conflict broke out. Mikadra is a town name (in Tigray) that came up over and over again, most fled from there. There is evidence of extreme trauma, especially among the women we interviewed. Rape was a weapon of war and many women were sexually assaulted prior to their fleeing Tigray. It seems that the children here were spared the worst of the trauma, or appear to be resilient at least, and seemed to be in good spirits, generally during our visit.
Among the most troubling reports is the lack of food at the camp. Although they are issued a monthly ration of wheat and beans, there is little else, and on some weeks, the shipment is late in arriving and they have gaps between the end of one ration and the beginning of the next.
There is frustration for the women, many of them educated and capable, but stuck in the camp as they have nowhere else to go. They want to have the govt. resettle them, and none of them I spoke to had an interest in returning to Tigray.
It is humbling to feel helpless in the face of so much need. We offer them our encouragement, and a promise to do all we can. It is hard to know that MCC's rations will last only 3 months unless we can extend the project. But funding for this kind of intervention is expensive, and there are limits to how much and how long we can keep supporting them.
The people we visited were gracious thanked us sincerely for our efforts, and we promised to do all we could before leaving. We continued on to Debark, about 25 kms further north where there are several camps that are even larger and contain IDPs as well as refugees from Eritrea.
During our tour, one little boy happily showed me the toy pistol he had fashioned and told me that his father was an Eritrean soldier. We were able to see inside some of the tents. This is very sobering. Up to 48 people (10 households) can occupy one tent. Small foam mats line the walls but will be used at night. Huge piles of cooking utensils fill the middle of the tent. The conditions they must endure here are heartbreaking, but I know they came from worse, and there are systems in the camps to provide at least minimum sustenance in hopes that their situation here is not permanent.
We did have a brief debrief with someone at the camp, then got back in the car and headed South again to Gondar. I had a flight back to Addis from Gondar at 5pm and we were on target to arrive at the airport about 4:20 which was great.
Unfortunately, on the way, it became quite dusty and windy. By the time we got to the sky was dark and ominous. Sure enough, despite the dry season weather, a huge storm opened up right on the town. The plane was delayed by an hour, then canceled altogether an hour later. I had to stay another night in Gondar. The main problem with this was that I was going to teach Sunday School in the morning, so I had to call Rebecca to jump in at the last minute. (The sad irony of it all was that I looked on the radar map and there was only one small cloud cell in the whole country and it was right over Gondar!)
I returned to the airport the next morning and the flight was rescheduled for 10 am. I returned without incident. It was good to see Rebecca and the kids again. She had had an insanely social weekend with guests coming and going, and several rendez-vous with friends in different parts of town on top of Sunday School.
We had our small group Sunday afternoon and it was good to be back in that rhythm again. Oren has been studying intensely for his mock A level exams which began this week. He has quite a few hours of exams in Maths, Chem, and History. It is good to be together as it is harder when Rebeca and I have to divide and conquer to do our job. In the coming weeks we should be able to travel together to several places.
Rebecca will add a blog later this week with details of our Djibouti vacation.
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