A Tale of Two Cities

I need to get one more blog up before a new series of activities begins. This month promises to be packed, but the trip I went on recently deserves an entry of its own. 

I have experienced an interesting nexus of events that seem related. I recently finished Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln. It is quite a long read, and worth it if you are a historian. What was most striking though was the extensive history of the Civil War that necessarily was a central focus of his first term in office. I had not considered the extent to which prosecuting a civil war is by definition a ruthless business. In order to get people to fight their countrymen, the penalty for desertion must be dire. And both sides executed a staggering number of men who for one reason or another did not want to fight. 

Bizwayo, our Project Manager and his daughter

That said, I was able to take a trip this month to Mekelle, the capital city of Tigray. I went with my colleague Solomon. There has been a peace treaty in effect since the end of November between the Govt. and Tigrayan Defence Forces (TPLF). In the past month, electricity, internet, fuel, and banking have been restored, to Tigray, as well as humanitarian aid brought in by air. (The roads are not open yet.) In the last several weeks, commercial air travel (Ethiopian Airlines) has begun flying there again. 

Because we have had a cash transfer emergency relief project running for the past 6 months, Solomon and I felt it would be a good opportunity to do some monitoring and evaluation. I was struck by the juxtaposition of my last two trips-- I was in Woldiya in January, a city that was invaded and occupied by the TPLF for many months before they were finally pushed out by Federal Forces. The departing militia left a path of destruction in its wake. 

Now I was visiting the capital city of the invading army, ready to hear stories of people here who spent over a year with no power, supplies, or communications, whatsoever, under constant threat of starvation as well as drone and MiG strikes. 

The suffering of Tigrayans was featured in the western media far more than the devastation they wreaked in their invasions of Afar and Amhara, and I don't doubt that the stories on both sides of this war--about its brutality, are probably true. As I learned in detail about the American Civil War, a war between people of the same country is generally marked by ruthlessness. 

I am very pleased to say that our invitation to visit was at the behest of our partner, the Meserete Kristos Church (Mennonite). I was always extremely impressed with their ability to stay relentlessly neutral throughout the conflict. The church in Amhara was often criticized and under threat for not being actively partisan and supportive of the war. The same was true in Tigray. 

But the relief the MKC and MCC provided, which was delivered in cash on the UN flights during the darkest days of the war, was made possible by that neutrality, as was the visit of Solomon and I this month. The Tigrayans we visited were grateful for the efforts of the Addis-based church to help them, even though they were theoretically 'the enemy'. We were welcomed as brothers by the Tigrayan Mennonites who had seen the generosity of their brethren in Amhara and Oromia. 

I have to say, this was my first visit to Mekelle ever, and I did not know what to expect. From the air though, it was obviously an enormous city, in fact, it is the second largest after Addis. It was hard to imagine that this city was completely shut down and isolated during the conflict. 

We arrived on a Saturday morning and were met off the plane by a small welcoming committee from the Mekelle MKC. They took us to lunch at what seemed like a very nice touristy cultural restaurant. I was surprised to see it quite busy, although there was no real evidence that the clientele were tourists. I did notice that I was the only foreigner I saw there during my whole visit. 

We stayed at the Yordannos Hotel which was open for business but did not seem to have more than a few people staying. It looked like it had been built by Italians and the rooms had a European feel. Very comfortable. (I heard later that they had almost no guests in the past 3 years, and even the staff who served us were only being paid the tips we gave.)

Mekelle on the ground looks a lot cleaner than Addis and better organized. Despite having been without food, electricity, fuel, banking, internet, phone, transport, school, medicine, or any govt. services for nearly 18 months. Now that most of these services had recently been restored, much of life looked almost normal. At least a façade of normal. There were shops open, cars and taxis and buses running, people bustling around, shopping, and generally looking pretty happy.

I am guessing the diaspora has sent money since banking has reopened, so even though jobs have not all been restored, there is commerce and shops are open. The roads from Amhara and Afar are still closed so the only things coming in are coming by plane, or else by WFP trucks through Afar. But strangely, it seems that the trucks that supply beverages--beer, wine, and soda have been allowed to cross as well (probably through bribes). In fact, I saw at least one double-trailer truck loaded with beer and soda pass through the center of town almost every hour! So there is an abundance of alcoholic beverages for sale and almost every shop along the road is selling it and people are sitting on low stools on sidewalks in front of these restaurants and shops drinking.

There are also a huge number of young men in the town, mainly sitting around drinking, many are disabled. These are the demobilized TPLF fighters. Although there were also still many heavily armed young men as well, clearly all of the TPLF have not been demobilized, and in fact the Federal Govt. is not in control of Mekelle. It is still under the jurisdiction of the Tigrayan Defense Forces (TDF). As a consequence, civil servants are still not being paid, like teachers, so schools have not restarted, and in fact, children in Tigray have not been to school at all in 3 years!

Our activities began the next day on Sunday morning. We met first with the Mekele Relief Committee, made up of members of the MKC church including the Director of the Compassion project, 2 church leaders, (one was a woman), a community businessman, and Bizwayo, the Project Manager for the cash transfer project. There were 5 men and 3 women in the group. They talked about beneficiary selection and explained that they received lists of names from the Labor Office of vulnerable people then made selections within that group. Selection criteria included pregnant and lactating women, children under 5, people with HIV or other chronic illnesses, elderly widows, and female-headed households. There were far more needy people than there were available funds. The project helped about 685 beneficiaries. They will help the same number in the current phase of the project and are just completing getting beneficiaries set up with bank accounts as the banking system just became available again on the week we arrived.

One message that came out from meetings with both relief committees that we met with, was gratitude for the project manager Bizwayo, a Tigrayan member of the MKC who was in Addis when the conflict started and he was trapped for 11 months outside of Tigray (away from his family). He was instrumental though in making the case to MCC about the possibility of cash transfers on the UN flights that were still operating. Several NGOs had permission to do this, and MCC received it as well through MKC. People in Tigray described Bizwayo as like Joseph, sold as a slave to Egyptians who eventually saved his people because of his position in Egypt. It is an apt description because we never would have come up with this intervention on our own. It needed a strong advocate in Addis.  

 

After the meeting, we attended the church service of the Mekelle MKC. It was surprising to see everyone worshipping so joyously after the trauma they had gone through. But maybe that was the reason they did. We were warmly welcomed by the congregation and appreciated being able to participate in this service.

After the service, we visited homes of 4 families who had received cash transfers. I have recorded their stories at the end of this blog.

We also visited a project of a man named Abebe who was a street child before starting his NGO that supports street children in Tigray. He has a live-in orphanage for about 30 children that is fully staffed as well as a nearly constructed school. He is supported by Israeli donors. They managed somehow to get some money during the crisis and he was able to keep the children alive that were in his care.

Abebe used to help with the Anna Hofer project that MCC ran in Mekele for many years. Abebe said that the sister who ran it returned to Canada before the war. He does not know what became of the children that were there.

We returned to the hotel for the night.

On Monday we started early and took a 50km trip north to the town of Wukro. We passed through a major military checkpoint as Wukro is controlled by Federal Defense Forces. The trip did not take more than 45 minutes. Again we went to the MKC church and met the Wukro relief committee, we heard stories of the intervention and selection criteria. After meeting for about an hour, we went and visited 3 beneficiary households that are in the beneficiary stories report.

We drove back to Mekelle from Wukro after that.

We had a post-visit discussion with our partner and came to the following conclusions: Although the peace agreement and return of a number of essential services including, electricity, food, fuel, telecommunications, banking, commerce (but not school and the road between Tigray and Amhara is still blocked) we believe it would be very beneficial to do one more round of cash transfers but adjusted for the current cost of market items.  The problem is that for most people, they have not been able to return to any kind of paid employment until there is normalization of the economy which requires civil service to be functioning again. This has not happened yet so while the situation is not as completely dire as before, people are still currently extremely food insecure especially those who are very vulnerable. We also discussed possible future opportunities of organizing some of the beneficiaries into self-help groups. This could be a future intervention once the crisis phase is safely passed.

We returned to Addis the next morning. Outside the airport was completely packed with people holding tickets who were hoping to get on the flight. Apparently, there is a waiting list that goes on for many days. I was very relieved that we were able to book a round-trip ticket. I am sure it is because I was a foreigner coming from Addis. We got on board without issue, except that we had to check about 10 Kilos of local honey that was given to us by different people. (It is a specialty of Tigray.)

One surprise, when we returned to Addis is that the local flight was routed through the International terminal so we had to pass through Immigration. It seemed like a screening as if we were coming from a foreign country. We were questioned briefly about our visit there, as was everyone else. I am sure it was a precautionary screening given the people who were traveling from Mekelle to Addis.

Please see stories on home visits below.

Mekelle Home Visits:

Tadelech Bogale lives with her son Amen 7, two daughters and Yeabkal (17) her oldest son who had left to join the TPLF and fight. She has not heard from him since he left a year ago and is not able to get any information from the Tigrayan Defense Force about his whereabouts or if he is even alive. She suspects he was killed but does not know where.

Tadelech became deeply distraught as soon as she began her account of the 4 month period in which the cash transfers were being implemented. She is a widow. She had run out of food. Her son Amen was virtually starving and showing signs of severe malnutrition. She could not buy any food and had run out of all stocks. She sobbed as she recounted the story of telling her children she could not give them food.

She is also hypertensive and diabetic and had to make a nearly impossible choice of buying medicine for herself which she needed to be well enough to take care of her family and buying food. She began dividing her dosages in half, and for a time there was no medicine available at all anyway.

She described several periods of intense drone strikes. She and everyone in her household cowered undercover, the MiGs were even worse because they would carry a payload of several missiles.

By contrast she said the UN plane they would hear was like ‘an angel of God’ because they knew that Bizwayo (our project manager) was coming with money to support them. The cash transfer funds saved their lives during the worst 3 months.

Her son Amen now 7 has not been to school for 3 years because they have been closed. They do not know when schools will reopen. Some social services have begun but the federal civil society is not back on salary so there are no teachers, or other govt. workers.

2) Bizu Desalegn and Abel Tesfaye (13)

Bizu and her son Tesfaye are both HIV positive and were struggling during the time of war. Her husband is an Eritrean soldier and is completely out of the picture now. She is the head of household and before the war ran a small poultry enterprise that she received along with training in the past.

With the beginning of the conflict she lost her business and home. She and Abel now lives\ in an unused ‘suuk’ or store that her sister owns. (She said the relationship between she and her sister is tense because Bizu is a Pente Christian and her sister is Orthodox—Pente Christians are largely scorned by the Orthodox and even associated with the enemy Ethiopian Govt) They have no way of making any income and were on the verge of starvation when the cash relief came. She even described trying to eat ‘non-edible’ things to survive. When she had a bit of money she used it for food for Abel. This was hard on her as she had been on ARTs (until the supply ran out), and these were very difficult to take on an empty stomach.

Abel (13) has not been in school for 3 years as schools have been closed throughout the conflict and not reopened.

Bizu hopes the worst is over, and since she is living in an abandoned shop, hopes that someday she might be able to produce and sell a few things like bread and pasta.

Alemtsehay Tadesse and Araya Gebreselasie

Had been school math teachers until the conflict broke out and schools were closed. That was 3 years ago, when one includes the COVID lockdown in 2020. They are currently unemployed and unable to get work. They have 3 children ranging in age from 22 to 7. The youngest is living with them.

They had just built a small house right before the conflict broke out and had used all of their money. They found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly broke, without any income. They ran out of food and were struggling to find any way to eat and feed their youngest child.

They described the terror of drone and MiG strikes and being completely cut off from family, especially children that were not in Tigray.

Since the end of the conflict they are hoping things will improve for them, but currently they have not heard any news of a plan to reopen schools again.

Wukro Field visit

Five sisters living together: (oldest to youngest) Fiori Asnake, (son Haele Sitotaw not there), Alemnest Sitotaw, Adise Sitotaw, Mulu Sitotaw, Tibka Sitotaw, and (the son of Fiori- Semere Hadish)

The five sisters shared a small house with their mother. Their mother is currently in Addis Ababa with their adult son Haile, who is struggling with trauma. At the start of the conflict, they were separated from their oldest sister and her son Semere and their second sister Alemnest because they were going to Dessie (in Amhara) to start University when the border closed. Fiori and her son were arrested and imprisoned there for being Tigrayan. They were not able to return for much of the time of conflict.

The mother, a widow of 9 years, has a substance abuse problem with chat (a stimulant leaf), and struggled to support the other children during the war. Tibka, the youngest broke down as she described seeing her mother begging on the street to get food for the girls. Tibka also said that sometimes her mother would send them out into the rural areas to villages where chat could be acquired very cheaply, to support her habit.

They also talked about the terror of the drones and heavy artillery fire that landed in Wukro from both TPLF and Federal Defense forces. Eritrean soldiers also invaded the town, and they witnessed several people killed in the street, including 2 people from their church.

They described a routine of leaving home in the morning and hiding in the forest during the day when the shelling would happen then returning to their homes by night when it was quiet.

The support of cash transfers came at their most desperate time when they were out of food, and they could not even find members of the church who could give them anything.

Although the peace agreement does give them hope, none of the girls who have remained in Tigray have been able to attend school for the past 3 years.

 Mikrte Abraham and her three children Fanuel 11, Natnael 5, and Aman 2, live together in a small rented house. Mikrte’s husband is a Tigrayan soldier, currently imprisoned in the southern city of Hawassa as he was captured during the conflict. She does not know when, or if he is coming back. When the conflict was at its worst she to struggled find any food to feed her family. She used to sell coffee on the street, but when the economy crashed and they were locked down, she could not even do that. She resorted to trying to cook peanut shells for food, just to have something to give her children.

She also confirmed that her older children had not been able to attend school for the past 3 years.

 Final visit: Kiros Berihu had an autistic child and her husband was out of work. He had been a TPLF fighter but did actually return home. She believes he would never be able to return to work where he used to be as he had a job in Amhara as a skilled laborer. Since being part of the TPLF, he would not ever be hired again in Amhara.