ETHIOPIA 2007

Every day was a highlight during my time in Ethiopia but one highlight was unique.  This was Circus Salem’s (Circus of Peace) Extravaganza.  I knew it was to be a special occasion but I did not know that I was to be an honoured guest.  Arriving in a large hall off a small, rough alley, I was ushered in and immediately dressed in Ethiopian costume.   Then, before an audience of around 200 people including many children, speeches began.   Abadir Belay welcomed ‘Mrs Angela’ and went into something approaching a eulogy.  It was video’d and recorded but I could scarcely take it all in.  I am seldom lost for words but when I was invited to respond I was quite choked. Then the real surprise.  They had been on my website and used this to produce a framed picture on goatskin of me running! 

With me is Bisrat Mesfin, my mentor in Mekelle.  Bisrat interprets for Birhan Woldu and in this capacity he has been on the Oprah Winfrey Show,  Live Aid with Bob Geldof, met Tony Blair and has a photo of himself and Birhan with Posh and David Beckham!

Meanwhile, a young woman had been preparing ‘buna’ (coffee).  The coffee is roasted over charcoal, ground while the water is boiled, then used to make small cups of rich sweet expresso style coffee.  A  Blessing the Bread ceremony followed and after I had cut the bread and it was distributed the show began.

The children and young people’s performing skills were outstanding.  There was a Tigrinya dance display, juggling, singing, unicycles, a pyramid and fitness display. At the end there were more speeches and when most of the audience had left the children who had taken part were invited to make a contribution.  Usually reticent children put their hands up to speak.  A small girl, the most versatile acrobat, spoke about having no mother or father.  A boy commented “My mother died and my father went away”.  These were all vulnerable children and young people, victims of war, disabled, orphans.  Circus Salem becomes their ‘family’.  Teaching circus skills is only half of it.  The children find fellowship and people who care.  They meet young people and adults with whom they can identify and whatever their hardship they are supported in keeping going and to realise the importance of education.

The evening finished with an invitation to dance and everyone jostled and laughed as I was pushed and pulled in the right direction.  At supper I sat next to Birhan Woldu, the baby now grown up who featured in Michael Buerk’s film of the 1984/85 famine.  Birhan was put on one side as a baby who was beyond help.  She was expected to die during the night but she confounded expectations and lived.  She is now a graduate in agriculture and is studying nursing.  Bob Geldof has returned to Ethiopia and Birham was presented at his Live Aid concert as the ‘face of famine’.  I will not forget the warm hug she gave me as we parted.  Her body felt fragile. It was like holding a small bird in your hands.

There were other highlights and many delights during my time in Ethiopia.    I will mention just a few.

My plane was four hours late, arriving in the early hours.  Bisrat was expected to meet me as had brought his sister to hospital in Addis Ababa. He was not there so I got a taxi.  He arrived later with a bunch of flowers, distraught that he had not met me as he had waited nearly all day. I had just got into bed when he arrived!  We travelled to Mekelle together later that day.

On arrival in Mekele I was whisked off to Fikre Alem and Adi Hana to visit the two rural schools which I visited last year.  Fikre Alem is transformed. The new class room block is complete and every class room has desks.  There are now 600 pupils, 200 more than last year.  The football team quickly changed into the Stoke City F.C. football shirts I had brought with me.   Adi Hana is coming along fast and the local communities in both areas are equal partners with A-CET in their school’s development. There remains a desperate shortage of books and equipment we take for granted.  Neither school has electricity or running water but at Fikre Alem the children are being introduced to drop toilets.

I revisited OSSA, an organisation which supports AIDS orphans and is itself supported by A-CET. I had particularly warmed to Ashebr Adane last year and he was pleased to tell me that he was completing his degree in management.  I talked with him and the regional coordinator,Yirgis Egziabher.  Yirgis left the room for a moment to return to invite me to speak to his staff who were assembled in another office just down the road.  It was a lovely meeting.

I had decided that it would be an imposition to be taken around to meet the A-CET’s students and families I met last year.  This was a mistake.  The welcome I received from those I did meet suggested that a second visit would have been appreciated.  I will revisit those whom I neglected on my next visit.  I did meet Mahadar, a young lad disabled by muscular dystrophy who is one of A-CET’s brightest students.  The family fear his sister’s son may also have the same illness as he is experiencing weakness in his legs.  Mahadar’s success is an excellent example to other families with a disabled youngster.  They realize that they do not have to keep their child in a back room because they can become and active citizen.  Mahadar was pleased with one of the t-shirts I had taken with me, collected after road races and unused.

I also met two of the three ‘street’ boys I met last year.  Kirgue is going to evening classes and Aragowi is happy go lucky and is not seeking to further his education.  Mawbratu has gone to Addis.  They are wearing Afford Rent-a-Car t-shirts, part of the bundle I took with me. I wanted to give the boys something but A-CET seriously discourages this kind of transaction. However, the boys showed me a room they rented from a night worker and Bisrat allowed me to pay for two months rent.  This cost less than a couple of modest evening meals.

I was taken to visit one of A-CET’s new students, Mughan Tadesse, a grade 7 12 year old.  His mother, Negisti who was in a wheel chair, was able to tell me in halting English how she had worked with the TPLA during the civil war and how this had enabled her to learn some secretarial skills and a little English.

Negisti’s husband is also disabled and is attending computer classes. I believe both may be landmine victims.  She told me that before she received support from A-CET she was depressed and couldn’t sleep because she could see no future for herself or her family. A-CET had given her peace of mind and hope.  What was unspoken was that her son very probably has a growth deficiency but if so it was undiagnosed.

OSSA took me to visit a grandmother who had been brought from her village in the country to look after her grand children after their parents died.  A month ago her eldest grandson, aged 17, died.  OSSA asked me to give her strength.

I was very pleased to return to the Axum Hotel where I feel at home. I can now walk confidently around Mekelle and I am learning to find my way around.  It is a comfortable place to be although I stay on the main roads. Traffic is relatively light, the town is bustling and busy.  It is clean and orderly and is not affected by tourism, chanting children or self-appointed tour guides.  Some high rise buildings tower above rows of rustic stone homesteads but the provision of services we take granted are still far off for most people.  Everyday living is very basic. I have never discovered how sewage is managed.  There are no obvious lavatories and no smell. There are some steams strewn with garbage but there is no plague of plastic.  Water has to be carried from taps or provided in large jerry cans carted on donkeys.  Once children enter secondary school they are always immaculately turned out.

I took time out to visit the Gheralta plateau and some of the finest rock-hewn churches of Tigray.  These are situated in high isolation on the outcrops of the Gheralta ridge.  They are captivating in their isolation. The people are poor and suffer hardship but looking across a plain, surrounded by staggering mountains is like gazing on the Garden of Eden.  Cows, sheep and goats graze. Huge oak trees provide occasional deep shade, small sandy streams, often little more than a rivulet, make small ravines to clamber across and there are always people, colourfully dressed or in white shamas criss-crossing the plain on foot or riding on donkeys.  .

Debre Maryam Koikor, one of the most famous of the rock churches and spectacular for its setting is on a small plateau atop a sheer-sided 2,480m high mountain.  Inside the built up façade the interior is very atmospheric and large, almost 10m side, 17m deep and 6m high.  Architectural features include 12 cruciform pillars with bracket capitals and seven arches.

If I had known what was involved in climbing up to Debre Marian Koiker I might have turned back!  Half way up I was seriously worried, not only about reaching the top but about coming down.  I reminded myself that Ranulph Fiennes aged 63 had just climbed the north face of the Eiger after several heart bypasses, minus fingers on one hand and suffering from vertigo.   He commented afterwards that if he had known what it would be like if he might not have done it. I knew the feeling!  Happily my guide held one hand on the way down and a priest offered to hold the other when a slight wobble would have tipped me over the edge.  On the following day we set off up another mountain, again in idyllic scenery.  The walk was as difficult as the previous day but only half the distance.  It was worth it!

I had stayed overnight at a new lodge being built by an Italian, Signor Rizzotti Silvio, who was born in Addis Ababa but left for university and employment in Italy when he was 18.  He has returned to fulfil a dream and build a tourist lodge to the highest standard of design and craftsmanship while also offering employment opportunities to local people.  On my arrival he invited me join him for lunch. We had drinks in a pleasant sitting room lined with books followed by three courses of the best Italian food.  I joined Signor Silvio again in the evening for aperitifs followed by four courses with wine.  Breakfast followed a similar routine. When I enquired what I owed him he would not hear of payment.

On my return to Addis Ababa, I had a day to spare so I rang Ermias at Abba Travel whom I met last year and asked him for a driver to take me to the Menegasha National Forest.  He found this rather a quaint request but sent Teferi Tedesse who had not been there before.  Menegasha protects the most substantial remaining patch of indigenous forest in the Addis Ababa region. It provides one of the earliest known incidents of conservation as it was established by Emperor Zara Yakob in the 15^th century.  It was a fascinating journey.  We left Addis behind quite quickly and branched off onto a very rough road where everyone else was on foot going in the other direction.  Goats, sheep, cows, and carts all flowing towards what I understood to be a market.   The road got rougher and we nearly turned back but I urged Teferi on.  Eventually we arrived at the forestry headquarters from which there were a number of marked footpaths.  We took an eight kilometre track through cool forests until the vegetation thinned as we got higher.  We saw an occasional baboon and bushbuck.  The waterfall to which we were aiming was merely a trickle but it was well worth the effort.

Teferi’s face is a mirror image of countless faces in murals on church walls.

 On the way back into Addis I realized that we were going past the Fistula Hospital so I stopped to enquire if Ruth Kennedy was available.  She was but in response to my invitation to join me for dinner, I found myself ensconced in Catherine Hamlin’s elegant and comfortable sitting room with arrangements underway for both of them to take me to lunch after the Women First 5k run. Catherine looked frailer than last year.  She is in her eighties and still plays an active part in the hospital. I strongly recommend her book, The Hospital by the River which tells the extra-ordinary story of how she and her husband, Reg, arrived in Ethiopia in 1959 on a short contract to establish a midwifery school. They ended up to become pioneers of fistula surgery and opened the hospital in 1974.  Thousands of girls and women who would otherwise be rejected have been rescued from lives of destitution as outcasts of their communities. 

The hospital needs old tights.  The girls and women cut off the legs and make rag rugs and use the panty to hold pads in place.  They also need wool to knit colourful squares for blankets.

I had run around the block at home in my walking shoes and concluded that it would be possible to run a 5k in them rather than take my running shoes. This was not my brightest decision! However, I assembled in good order the following day along with 8000 other women and girls.  For the elite runners it was a serious occasion with money involved.  For everyone else it was a party! Happily I did not have to hurry and I set out to enjoy.

Groups stopped running to gather in circles to dance and sing.  One girl running by tapped me on the shoulder and said “Run, Mama, run”.   Afterwards I gathered to see the winners but the big moment was when Habre Gabreselassie arrived.  The ululating and cheers were such that I had to put my hands over my ears.  His build is much more substantial than when he is on television winning races.

Ethiopia is celebrating its Millennium in June and Women First banners proclaimed that this year was the year to end violence against women.

I had one more day in Addis which was spent trying to discover the best way to carry the picture I had been given.  A man called Dawit came to my rescue.  He escorted me to the main post office and we went through various rigmaroles only to conclude that there was nought for it but to remove the frame.  Some men in a nearby garage did this for us and Dawit and I adjourned to a café for coffee.  Dawit is 40 and lives with his son.  He was injured three times during army service and despite speaking several languages he cannot get a job. All he wants is to work but his age is against him.

In the evening I enjoyed meeting an A-CET student, Ysakor Hailesellasie, who expects to be studying for his degree in Leicester this September.

The National Hotel where I stayed is a government hotel and managed with indifference.  However this may have been the reason why three men from Mogadishu were staying there.  Falling into conversation at breakfast I learned that one was (he said) the Minister for Planning in Addis for a conference.  He confided that the fighting would soon be over and the Islamists routed. 

The following day I left for Johannesburg but that’s another story!

May 2007