January Work, Retreats, Celebrations, Travel Restrictions

Staff Gena celebration day

If I had known I would be sitting here for the better part of a day with a draining phone battery, I might have started writing this sooner. I am currently sitting on the 11^th floor of the Ethiopian Customs Authority waiting, hoping to see the Head Commissioner (highest ranking official in the customs authority) to get approval to import our new Landcruiser which is currently stuck in Djibouti. The couch is comfortable and at this point, everyone but Wonde and I have left. That we are having to do this at all is perplexing. Every office we stopped at for permission to import confirmed that all of our paperwork was in order and we should have no reason to be blocked from importing. But at the border, they are insisting on a letter from the Head Commissioner before the car can be released. We have been to many offices on our way, everyone happily affirming us, but no one actually giving us the signed letter we need.

This is my third visit to this place. We thought we had accomplished our goal Monday when the Deputy Commissioner reviewed our documentation and said all was in order and that she would write the letter—but to ‘come back tomorrow’. Wonde stopped by the next 3 days only to find the unsigned letter on the desk of a lower functionary waiting for some other level of approval. Today, Friday we came back and took the 4-day-old letter off the desk and back to the Deputy Commissioner (our putative ally and friend), who said she would send it up to the desk of the head commissioner.

Meanwhile, I am wondering how this country processes thousands of containers of imports per day if an NGO importing one vehicle requires clearance from the highest official in the land.

6pm Friday, the Commissioner comes out and tells us she has decided to refer the matter to the Ministry of Finance for guidance (though she can find nothing wrong with our documents and duty paid.)…

A new day (actually several days later). It is the last day of January and needless to say, despite several visits to the Ministry of Finance now, we are no closer to getting the car, but do have the happy nods and affirmations of officials to say that there does not seem to be any problem with our paperwork—but no one seems to have authority to give us the final permission demanded by a person at the border who has decided not to let the car in. Again, the lesson I continually learn from bureaucracies in Africa: Absolutely anyone involved in a process has the authority to stop it, but there is no one with authority to move it all the way to completion.

Since it is the end of January there is a lot to report on the past month. The last entry was written shortly after our return from a retreat and vacation in Kenya and Tanzania. Since then we returned just in time for David to start school. Oren, on the other hand, had another week with us before he left. That was good because we had to get him an exit permit since he was still on a resident visa from when he lived with us.

I could write another long discussion about the nightmare it was for Wonde and Oren to get the exit permit at immigration. It involved about 3 trips, and me basically reuploading all the legal documents of our country program and partner agreements to show that indeed we were an INGO working in Ethiopia (since the 1970s!). But he did succeed and was only briefly held up at immigration at the airport. It really did stress him out a lot, the prospect of being delayed leaving the country. But he has been back for 3 weeks now and has returned to William and Mary for his second semester.

We have returned back to another busy season of work. Although in the current political/economic season Ethiopia is in, it is hard not to feel a vague sense of dread about our work here—like it could all be undone very quickly. Multiple crises are overlapping, some natural, like drought in the north of the country that is causing near-famine conditions in some parts of Tigray. But the over 30% inflation for the rest of the country is making everyone poorer (and thinner). There is active conflict in the Amhara region where our major food security projects are, and we cannot even visit them by road or flight (in Gojjam). Oromia region has also recently become more and more unstable with the OLA militia engaged in what has been described as an ‘epidemic’ of kidnappings. Most organizations have security advisories not to travel there at all. Since the Oromia region surrounds Addis it makes going out of town feel risky. We can call ahead, but we have not been out to visit any projects there for the past 3 months.

On top of this, one can gather by my above writings on visits to the customs and immigration offices that the government has been largely dysfunctional as far as providing necessary services. Many of us have had to spend hours or even days trying to complete very simple services for our organization. This mainly falls on Wonde our logistics officer.

The other big responsibility we have had since our return is to complete the recruitment and hiring process for a new Food Security Programs Manager. Having Mesfin depart is hard, he was an excellent FS manager, so good that he is now going to be managing at a higher level one of our Global Affairs Canada-funded programs that is spread across several partners and countries. We are happy for him to get this promotion, but finding someone new is hard. We have largely completed the process now having put out a call, pared down multiple applicants, interviewed finalists and we are about to make a decision this week.

We have also had many meetings with visitors from some of our back donors like Canadians Food Grains Bank and have been doing a lot of relational work with them and partners as the new GAC Nature Positive program was launched this month. It is a huge grant for 2 of our partners, but has required a lot of work to be sure all the parts (especially the money) flow smoothly from the start.

The situation is complicated by the fact that both implementing partners are working in zones that have recently been affected by conflict which has created problems with movement on the roads at a critical time.

Despite all of this, we have had some opportunities for some leisure and relational activities with our staff. In fact, this is our third year of organizing the annual  Gena (Orthodox Christmas) party for all of our staff and their families. This is a huge event as we have 11 staff and most are married with many children. Last year we went to this kind of resort park with soccer/volleyball/horses/ a pool/ and games like ping-pong, foosball, pool, etc. It is a lot of fun if you like athletics. There were about 40 of us in attendance in all. We rented a small bus and took the trip about 20 minutes out of Addis city limits. We had a blast there. The sports highlight was a huge football match with all the staff and older kids participating. David and I and Rebecca played as well. Everyone participated in multiple games. This was right after our return from Tanzania so Oren was still here and he and Barry played multiple games of chess. It was good to see them commiserate on College classes as well.

We had a huge meal together then coffee and a big gift exchange. Our predecessors left a good list of all staff kids and their ages and we did a good job of bringing stuff from the US and Tanzania to give to everyone. We returned home in the late afternoon. I did see one group of armed men there, it was a group of Oromo militia, who came and played ping pong. It is hard not to be wary of every situation these days

The following weekend we had an office staff retreat at a resort about 45 minutes out of town—a resort with a waterpark called Kiriftu. It is supposed to be really nice. We stayed over 2 nights with office staff families and their kids, a smaller group. It was actually quite fun as well. The water in the water park was quite cold, and to conserve power they would run a few rides at a time, but I did go on all of the slides, which were excellent as well as the wave pool.

For the staff kids, it was unworldly fun. They loved it and had never experienced anything like a waterslide. Most could not swim so Rebecca did help several of them with swim lessons in a pool the second day we were there.

We returned home on Saturday and found we had arrived right at the end of the Timket celebration (Orthodox Baptism of Jesus celebration). The celebration involves enormous parades from every Orthodox church to meeting places. They construct enormous tabots (temple-shaped structures to hold the arc of the covenant). There can be more than a kilometer of choirs and priests marching before the tabot coming from every church. The tabots look like large floats like medium-sized houses that are rolled down the roads at the end of the processions. Usually, red carpets are laid in front of them. Roads are closed until they have finished which can take several hours.

Needless to say, my car arrived perfectly timed to be fully caught between closed roads, so we spent an hour or so just watching the parades go by. It can be quite entertaining if you don’t need to go to the bathroom after driving for a couple hours.

Since returning to Addis we have heard more and more stories about kidnappings in Oromia, including in the town where we just had the office staff retreat. Our church retreat scheduled there in 2 weeks has been canceled, at least the part held out of town. It is a very sad time here, and the sense of lawlessness gives one a sense that the country is becoming ungovernable. We keep most of what we hear secret. It is not a time to speak one’s mind.

The last celebration worthy of note was International Day. A tradition at Bingham School. It is a chance for every nationality represented at the school to have a booth to share foods and other cultural traditions as well as a flag parade and different stage events. Rebecca and I helped out at the American booth, I oversaw cornhole games and we led several line dances that were a really big hit with the attendees.