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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 |
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 |
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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.
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| Ayenaddis, Tsebay and Anamaw |
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.
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.
Closed area after 2 years,
note the trees and grasses
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| Lupine |
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| Soil bund with tree lucern and mulched soil |
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 |
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| Tsebay's grain storage: Mesfin points to 2 PICS bags |
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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.
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| 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 |
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 |
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