Economies of Desperation (A field visit to Tigray and Afar)

Gash Tareka Gebreyesus

 "Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. " I have been listening to Chezlow Milov's book The Captive Mind about life in Poland under Stalinism. In it, he is answering the question of a friend about whether or not Americans are really 'stupid'. 

I am hearing this on the week that Rebecca and I have planned a field visit to emergency projects in Tigray and Afar. Milov's point is that people who have not lived through a time of civil violence and war in their communities, such as existed in Eastern Europe in WWII, have a false sense of a 'status quo' that is basically just, and that any disruption of this 'normalcy' is assumed to be a temporary state that eventually must be rectified--brought back into balance. To see a corpse on the road or a neighbor's house blown open, daily, as a matter of course, changes that perspective. One loses the sense that the world is just or good. One simply does one's best to survive and ceases to believe there is a 'normal' that is better than what they are living.

The sense of a truly 'unjust' world greeted Rebecca, David, and me on our trip to northern Ethiopia to the wartorn Tigray region where we spent two days, then continued back south to the neighboring Afar region--one of the most brutal environments on the planet, home to nomadic people who subsist on goat milk, where temperatures regularly exceed 40C (105f). Both regions have been experiencing near-famine conditions due to extreme drought, this following several years of war. There is little evidence of a 'just' status quo or any idea of a return to 'normalcy' in the haunted eyes of the people we met there.

The reason David was with us was because it was his spring break, and while it is nice to take a snorkeling vacation from time to time, this week, Rebecca and I needed to do some monitoring of our projects and felt like it would be a good idea for David to see some of the work we do. (We took Oren on a similar trip last year.)

Getting to Tigray and Afar is best accomplished by plane, as it has become increasingly risky to travel outside of Addis into Oromia where there have been multiple kidnappings. And Amhara zone is impassable as well. Nonetheless, two of our staff, Wonde and Solomon, took the Landcruiser 2 days in advance and drove a circuitous route to Me'kele, the capital of Tigray, to meet our family, and our food security programs manager Gulma, who arrived by plane. We flew early on a Sunday morning and they met us at the airport in time to pick us up and take us to church. 

The reason we wanted to arrive on a Sunday is because our partner in this region is the Meserete Kristos (Mennonite church) Development Commission (MKCDC), and we wanted a chance to greet the local congregation before going out to the woredas where our project is running. Our flight arrived on schedule and we met our colleagues on time to get to the service and were even given a certificate of appreciation during the service.

Afterward we had an amazing traditional habesha lunch--- the best lamb tibs I think I have ever eaten, along with delicious shiro, spinach, and other accompaniments. We made it a quick lunch because then we needed to head out of town to do our first monitoring visit.

Bizuayehu led our expedition. He is the project manager for the cash transfer project we are doing to help about 3000 people with about $33 per month (for 3 months)--enough to buy a month's worth of rations (50 kgs of cheap grain like maize or barley). While crops have failed, it is still possible to get food in the market imported from other regions as long as one has money. Because of the war, all social safety net programs have failed in this time of drought, so there is almost no hope for those without means or money. Our contribution covers less than 10% of the needs in the 3 Woredas where we are running this program, but it is better than nothing.

Fortunately, the local govt. officials in the woredas have a list of the most vulnerable people in each village which can be readily distributed to organizations able to provide humanitarian relief. On our first stop, a town about 2 hours from M'ekele on difficult roads, we talked to some local farmers about the cost of food and fertilizer. We then talked to 5 local govt. officials. They admitted that their job felt nearly hopeless as they were not able to meet the needs of the most vulnerable households in their community. But they were grateful for the support we offered. They did say the govt. offers about $8 per month to a scaled-down number of the most vulnerable households, for a limited timeframe for each recipient. That is all they can do.

We interviewed several recipients of cash transfers in the first village we visited. Here are some of the stories from Rebecca's trip report. 

Behihu Desalegn is 66 years old. Dressed in a matching aqua suit and blanket, he talked to us about his 5 children and how he was able to survive with them, thanks to the cash transfer he received. He bought barley with the money. He’s a farmer but there was no rain for the last two years and so now there has been no production. He came to town to buy fertilizer like many of the people we met and hopes to plant teff, barley and wheat. He affirmed that in the past, they experienced drought once every 10 years. But drought years have become more frequent recently, and now it’s moved from once every 8 years, to once every 5 years.

Hadesh Hailemariam, 32, is a woman head of household. Her husband left her with their 4 children, ages 12, 8, and twin 4-year-olds. She makes a living braiding hair and collecting firewood for sale. She received 5625 ETB ($100) over 3 months and used it to buy sorghum and barley. Normally, people prefer to eat teff, but right now it’s far too expensive, and so Hadesh, like most desperate people, is just buying the cheapest grain she can afford. She said that she has no words to express what the money meant to her. She was hopeless and then received aid. She hopes that somehow, she could get a loan to open her own beauty salon and braid hair full time as a job. She was born in Saharti and has lived here all her life; she has no desire to migrate to a city as many others have done. She’d like to try to make a living at home.

Bertawit Leul shared with us that she has 5 kids and is raising them on her own because she is divorced. When we asked her children’s ages, she said the oldest is 18. She used to earn a living by making local beer, T’alla, but due to poor health, she can’t do that work anymore. And then as she kept sharing, she confided that she had lost her 18-year-old son in the war. This is what happened: two Amhara soldiers came to her compound. One of them kicked her to the ground; the other said that he was going to rape her. She begged him not to, saying that she is HIV+ to try to dissuade him. But the soldier raped her anyway, and then they stole all her property. Her son witnessed this atrocity and was devastated with anger. He joined the TPLF army and was sent down on the offensive against Afar. He was killed at Chifra (Afar). 

We interviewed a half dozen people and most reported losing a child or loved one in the war, and the desperation of crop failure resulting from the drought. We heard reports that over 120 people had actually died of hunger in the woredas where we were working. 

The road to and from the first woreda we visited was long and very rough. We returned at about 6:30pm in the evening. We had a decent hotel room, had a light dinner, and went to bed. 

The next day we went to a second woreda (Gera Alta), equally far away to the north, an area particularly hard hit by drought. We drove into the central street of the small town of Tsigereda and found a crowd of people gathered around the bank. They had all been registered to receive their first cash transfers (2 months’ worth) and were going to pick up money at the Wagagen bank branch. We entered the bank to meet some of the people who were withdrawing their money.

I appreciated how systematically beneficiaries were selected in collaboration with officials in the woreda and the pains the bank takes to register each one and open a bank account for them. Each person has a bank book and the cash transfer is done right into their account. They can either withdraw it all or over time. This gave us a lot of confidence in this method of providing relief. 

We talked to Timnit Desta, a distinguished and solemn older lady sitting in line. She was holding her bank book proudly, and very thankful to be getting some money. She has 9 kids who are mostly older and live in other parts of the country, not able to support her. 

After visiting the bank, we headed to a nearby community to visit some of our beneficiaries at their homes and talk to them about the challenges they face and how (and if) the cash transfers are helping. We particularly wanted to be sure there was sufficient food in the market to be able to buy something if they had money. 

Here are a few stories Rebecca recorded during our visit:

We first stopped at the home of Atsede Tadesse, who is 46 years old. Her face is thin and drawn and her inner pain shows clearly on the outside. She has 5 children, 4 older boys and finally a girl. Handeya Getet, 7, hung close to her mother and observed us carefully as we talked together. We learned that her 18-year-old, Fetele Getet thankfully did not go to the war, so she still has her oldest son. But there is no husband in the picture. Atsede has some farmland, but she has never used it and it is not producing. She really was living hand to mouth for the past few years, depending on the safety net program and begging from neighbors. The money she received came at the right time. She got 2 months disbursement at once and was about to buy 100 kg of maize for 3800, leaving her enough money to take the grain to the grinding mill.  The one good thing in her life is that she has a solid Hidmo house, passed down from her mother. And she is fortunate to live close to a handpump.

We moved further into the countryside and next stopped to talk with Abrihet Kiros, 27. We learned right away that Abrihet does not even have a home of her own. She is currently living in a stone house that a neighbor is letting her use for free because she had nowhere to go. If the neighbor kicks her out, she has no money to pay rent, so she prays this will go on for a while. She came from a community farther away. During the war, Eritrean soldiers came to her home and stole everything from her. It’s possible that even worse things happened but she didn’t say. She was living on the street with her two children, Abel Guursh (6) and Yonas Kahasai (9 months), begging for dry injera from her neighbors. For a while, her younger son was very sick. We could see that Abrihet herself is impossibly thin, and yet she is still trying to breastfeed her baby. She was not getting any support from the government, so she had to take a loan from someone to try to buy food. When she got the cash transfer, she had to use half of it to start repaying the loan. So she could only buy a little bit of maize, and after that, she had no money left to take it for grinding. She has no choice but to simply roast the maize and try to eat it whole. With controlled anger and frustration, she picked up the few grains of maize she had in front of her, showed them to us and then flung them back into the bowl. It is hard to imagine a young woman in worse circumstances, and so greatly at risk of starvation herself. 

We returned to M'ekele in the afternoon and had an evening meal at the restaurant we loved so much with some elders from Meserete Kristos church. They were deeply appreciative of MCC's efforts to relieve some of the suffering from drought. 

The next morning Solomon, Wonde, Rebecca, David and I set off for our next stop, Semera-- the capital city of the Afar region. Honestly, it seemed strange that we were taking one of the roads that must have been the main assault route of the TPLF two years ago when they were trying to cut off the port of Djibouti from Addis Ababa. It is a decent highway, and fortunately is not difficult to travel since the signing of the peace treaty. It was hard not to think that many of the people we met probably lost brothers and sons on this route as many TPLF fighters were killed along the border between these regions. 

Afar, like Djibouti, looks like an otherworldly desert. Some areas feature tumbles of black volcanic rock, resembling piles of broken asphalt; in other places the soil dry and sandy. One thing which grows in abundance is 'Prosipis Juliflora' also known as mesquite. It is an invasive plant, introduced from Central America in the 1960s to increase soil stability. It has taken over almost all arable land in the Afar over the past 40 years as it has no enemies here and grows like kudzu in Alabama. It cuts out the niche required by grass for grazing land. 

It is hard to believe anything can grow in the dry heat in Afar. It is really hot and dry! We arrived in Semera in the afternoon without incident. We stayed at a place that is supposed to be a 'resort' but the only thing it had going for it was AC in the rooms. It is Ramadan right now and Afar is a Muslim region, so finding a place to get lunch during the day was not easy. The hotel also had a number of dignitaries staying there as well so we spent a lot of time around armed soldiers in all of the lounge areas. 

We did manage to get dinner and went to bed early. We were up very early the next morning to meet Muhammed, a program manager from APDA, our Afar partner. The project we were planning to see was a food distribution. APDA made us aware that there were many young pregnant women who were so weak from hunger that they would die in labor. There were also many malnourished children under 2. We had arranged to have enough FAMIX (a supplement for PLWs and children) to feed 1500 pregnant women for 2 months. 

The intervention site was about 5 hours south of Semera in a Woreda called Burimudaiyto, which has been badly affected by drought which has killed livestock and crops, although the Awash river runs through it. We went off-road for about an hour and came to one of 9 distribution points where APDA health extension officers were just beginning a distribution. There was a crowd of women and children around who had been selected by arm circumference for supplementary feeding. They received 15 Kgs of FAMIX and 5kgs of sugar per malnourished mother or baby. 

It was very clear that the children were malnourished, and we were told there had been a measles outbreak and many of the children were recovering but extremely frail. 

We talked to several women. Here is Rebecca's report:

Adeh Hamed has two children, Erbe Musa (4 years old) and Mohammed Musa (2 years old). Her younger child is no larger than most children 9 months old. He was just recovering from measles, like many children in the community. The measles outbreak in the community has been a major risk factor in increasing malnutrition among children under 5, as it weakens the immune systems of young children and decreases appetite. Last week 5 young children died; 2 died this week in the woreda.

We asked Adeh why it is so hard to get food right now. Her first concern is that there is no good way to get treatment for their sick children. MCC Partner APDA trains local people to be village health workers. They are able to give basic training on prevention, hygiene, and maternal and child health. They can treat simple health problems. But they are not doctors. And because of the difficult conditions in this area, government health workers are not excited to be out in the rural health stations. They stay in town and it is almost impossible to get health services near this settlement.

Hasooni Hamed doesn’t know her exact age -- perhaps she is 20? She has 7 children, 3 boys and 4 girls. She was holding her youngest child, Fatuma Dula (18 months). She explained that her family has no income now and can’t buy food when their livestock has no value at the local market. There has been no rain and no grass with which to fatten their animals. When a woman like Hasooni receives 30 kg of Famix for herself and her severely malnourished child, she will not be able to horde it for herself and her baby. Any mother would certainly have to share the food with her other hungry children because there is no other food in the house. But by sharing her food, Hasooni will not be able to recover from malnutrition. 

Asiyah Hamed (blue dress) also showed us her 2 year old daughter, Asaukah Manda. The child’s skin was still peeling as she was recovering from a measles infection she got last month. The APDA health workers will join a government team tomorrow to go house to house, on a vaccination campaign against measles. The government has the resources to organize a mobile cold chain, but APDA has the local health workers, recruited from their own communities and trained, who can lead the government staff to the households that need their help. 

When we finished our visit, we stayed the night in the town of Gewane, the closest place to the project site. The plan was for Wonde and Solomon to continue back to Addis Ababa by road, while Rebecca, David and I returned to Semera to fly back. We did so the next morning and had time to spend several hours in the APDA office in Semera and do several administrative tasks related to monitoring and partner updates. 

We had a leisurely lunch in a restaurant then were dropped off at the Semera airport and flew back to Addis, to arrive around supper time. 

It was good to be back and see the dogs and cat. Fortunately, Bereket had been off of school that week and spent time with them at the house. We are coming back to a lot of work as our fiscal year closes on March 31st. We will try for another update when we can get our heads above water again.