A Great Big Run For Africa - Please Help Support An Inspired Run

One of the phenomena we at Partners in the Horn of Africa have noticed is that donors who visit our projects in Ethiopia often describe their visits as ‘transformational” and, subsequently, become super involved in Partners’ work in Canada.

Consider the origins of what has become one an amazing event every fall in the Okanagan. Alison Moscrop and Nicole Rustad, successful businesswomen and mothers in Kelowna have both visited Partners’ projects in Ethiopia. Shortly after her visit in 2004 Alison wanted to find a better way of connecting with the Ethiopian working women whom she had met in Partners’ micro finance programs. Alison had also been impressed by Ethiopians’ almost fanatical attachment to long distance running. Why not raise money for Ethiopian women by getting Canadian women running in Canada to raise money for micro finance loans in Ethiopia. And so, the idea was born. Lots of good ideas never get off the drawing board but this one did. Alison and Nicole, who this year was to finally visit Partners’ projects in Ethiopia, organized the first “Great Big Run for Africa”. And this was a run that would impress any Ethiopian. The first year two extreme athletes, Crystal Flaman and Stephanie Moore ran one hundred kilometres from Westbank to Partners’ office in Enderby!!! Needless to say, that got the attention of the media and the people in the North Okanagan. After all, 100 kilometres can be a tiring drive. Since that first run in 2006 the Great Big Run for Africa has converted to a relay format with dozens of women running and collecting pledges for Partners’ micro financing loans in Ethiopia. The runners, for the most part, have never been to Ethiopia but they know how desperate the lives of women can be in sub-Saharan Africa and they want to do more than write a cheque. They want to connect with Ethiopian women and they know that in a country famous for its runners, women will understand why Canadian women have chosen to help them by running.

This year the Great Big Run for Africa will be held on Sunday, October 26 and the runners from Westbank will be complemented by another group of women also running to Enderby---the latter group running west from Mabel Lake to the Partners’ office.

The Great Big Run shows us how international aid ought to work. Aid has to be about more than writing cheques and is too important to be left to government. It has to involve communities in Canada becoming more involved and knowledgeable about the third world…about connecting mentally with the problems of the developing world by incorporating those problems into their lives in Canada. It is inspiring to watch the Great Big Run unfold each year. If a group of individuals operating independently can transform a Canadian community and involve it in a successful region-wide fund raising effort for the developing world, the larger macro problems of the third world..at least for one glorious day each fall…seem more manageable.

Exciting new projects amidst a threat of famine

These are hard days in Ethiopia. Famine is once again stalking the country and, at the same time, the worldwide rise in fuel costs has hit the country with a particular vengeance.

The spectre of famine is, like many aspects of life in Ethiopia, ambiguous. The government pegs the number of people at risk at 4.5 million. Aid agencies claim the number is double that. The government and many of those aid agencies are at loggerheads over new legislation which controls and limits the activities of aid organizations in civil rights advocacy. This, so the government claims, has angered aid organizations and resulted in exaggerated claims designed to embarrass the government. The bickering seems irrelevant. 4.5 million people at risk of starvation should be enough to mobilize massive relief programs. Yet, it has not. There is huge gap between the funds that are needed and those that have been donated to the issue. It seem clear from the images that appear on our TV screens of distended bellies and lifeless eyes that many young Ethiopian children will die of starvation.

This year’s famine is different because of the current and atypical inflation. In a country like Canada, where the average family spends about 20% of its income on food, inflation cuts into our life style but is not tragic in its consequences. A 30% increase in the cost of living means that our food bill goes up to 26% of incomes. In Ethiopia, where a family spends 70% of its income on food a 30% increase in the cost of living means that a family has to spend about 90% of its income to feed itself. And today the rate of inflation in Ethiopia is reported to be as high as 39%. But a family cannot spend a high percentage of its income on food and still survive. Clothing, medicine, transportation and housing all make demands that can only be met by reducing the amount of food which is purchased.

In the result, famine is not confined to the rural poor but also includes those in urban areas that simply lack the means to purchase food even though employed. These terrible increases have arisen largely because of the rising price of fuel. Governments in the third world are increasingly finding themselves unable to subsidize fuel costs and prices for diesel fuel have increased dramatically and driven up the prices of foods that are largely transported to market by trucks. And the craze for bio fuels also plays a part. While people in wealthy nations feel good about using ethanol in their cars, the inevitable and resulting impact on corn prices operates to increase the price of all edible crops.

All of this has created a conundrum for Partners in the Horn of Africa. Should we move into the field of food relief to help address the issue—a field where we have no experience or expertise. After much debate our directors decided not to. Food distribution is not an area where we have expertise and it would be inconsistent with our model of working with Ethiopian ‘partners’ on specific projects if we were to simply transfer funds to food relief agencies. Better for us to emphasize permanent, on going food security measures that will lead to long term food stability…e.g. irrigation projects, farmer training, reforestation.

In the meantime we are undertaking new projects, rapidly. After a successful pilot project involving washable, reusable sanitary pads for rural school girls we are now setting up manufacturing shops where local women will fabricate the pads which will then be distributed, along with special modified panties that hold the pads, to rural girls who routinely miss two or more days of school each month. This project was initiated by Mom and Me, a wonderful group of mothers on the North Shore of Vancouver who hold a Mother’s Day dance and dinner to raise funds for Partners each year.

And we are now exploring another prison project. Prisoners in Ethiopia, as in most parts of the world, are routinely bypassed by aid organizations. Yet, third world prisons have great needs. To date we have had two wonderfully successful projects in Ethiopian prisons. The first was a bio gas project that converted waste to methane gas for stoves serving 2000 prisoners. The second project set up a metal shop where prisoners could receive training that would make them employable upon release. Now we are looking at education for children….in prisons. In Ethiopia mothers in prison are expected to raise their own children and this creates great challenges related to education. Getting the kids to school outside the prison is expensive and the mothers have no money for transport or for school registration. And the mothers themselves need new skills if they are to be employed upon their release. So we are now working with the Executive Committee of an in-prison association. We’ll keep you posted.

School construction continues apace. We are getting better at this, picking up experience and know how with each new school. We have excellent engineering resources both in Canada and in Ethiopia and we are developing construction standards that are both affordable and reliable. We try and spend 55% of our funds on education-related projects, many of them involving construction. We are now undertaking our first turnkey construction project in the town of Gubya, in the Gojam Region, where an entire high school will be turned over to the education authorities in a couple of months. This will allow a remote community, for the first time, to send their kids to school in the same community. Up to now only the more well-to-do families (and there are not many of those) could afford to send their kids to high school in neighbouring towns. And in those cases the families were deprived of the children to assist with chores after the school hours…a not inconsiderable sacrifice in a society where all the labour is manual and where the availability of high school age kids makes a difference to the family’s welfare. Other families, and by far the majority, had no such option. Higher education and the promise that comes with it of breaking the cycle of poverty were simply not available. The school will change all of that and one of the surest signs of that was the degree of community involvement in the manual labour of basic construction. Up to 500 townspeople regularly showed up to dig foundations, carry sand for cement etc. etc.

We are also getting ready to start on footbridge construction as the rainy season comes to an end next month. As we noted in our last newsletter, we will be building a bridge at Ayu where 20 to 30 lives are lost each year as people try to ford swollen rivers…and where entire communities are cut off from medical, educational services as well as markets for three months each rainy season.

The cost of these construction projects, like food, is rising dramatically and this will create some challenges but we are all optimistic as one must be in this business. We know that our presence will make a difference and that we are fortunate to be able to assist the wonderful but desperately poor people of Ethiopia.

Back from the Bale Mountains and the inauguration of Kasso Manso School

Two days ago we returned to Addis Ababa from the Bale Mountains of Central Ethiopia…not far from the home of Ethiopia’s great marathon runners and one of the most beautiful parts of the country.

Bale is the place where Partners in the Horn of Africa got started with its first project 7 years ago…a simple footbridge, which allowed several thousand people to cross a swollen river to hospitals, schools and market places during the rainy season. Since then Partners has completed more than a dozen projects in the area…..libraries, micro-financing programs, water distributions systems and school classrooms. It is one of our favourite areas, nestled as it is high in the Bale Mountains. The main crop in the area is wheat and the rolling hills of Bale remind Albertans of their own Rocky Mountain foothills

Our trip this year was for a very special occasion. Last year Partners was approached by EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd., one of our strong corporate supporters in Western Canada. EBA and its employees offered to raise money for a major project in rural Ethiopia…one that would hold the attention of their entire staff and accomplish as much as possible for the people of rural Ethiopia. The small rural community of Kasso Manso and its elementary school were quickly settled upon as the site of the project.

The village of Kasso Manso is about 12 kilometres from the nearest road and can be accessed only by a trail that is used mainly by horses and donkeys. The village itself is amazing. It has an elementary school with an excellent academic record despite the fact that it is almost completely isolated from the larger community. There is (was) no electricity or water in the town and the village is about as self-sufficient as you can get. Education and the school are important to the community. The fathers of the school kids voluntarily farm a small piece of land dedicated to the school and with the proceeds from the harvest each year the community buys stationery and school supplies. Two years ago the community built three large classroom blocks from chika (mud and straw) but could afford no more than the bare walls. As such, the buildings were unusable and in time the absence of a foundation would lead to their collapse. Partners decided that the school would be a good fit with EBA.

Over the past year Partners finished the classrooms (cement foundations, floors, windows, mortar on the exterior/interior and desks for the kids). Piped water was brought to the village of Kasso Manso and distribution lines were run to the school. Latrines were also built so that kids no longer had to do their business in the nearby bushes. In the nearby town of Kasso Wara two more water distribution systems were built and in the community of Retaba construction is underway for a footbridge, which will allow some 300 kids to attend school throughout the year. In short, major changes have been wrought in the community.

EBA raised over $100,000 for this project, the lion’s share of it by fundraising from their employees. And then last week, Maureen Marsh, an EBA employee joined us for the inauguration. We left Addis Ababa for the 12 hour drive to Kasso Manso knowing that the celebration would be something special but were still astounded with what we found when we arrived at Kasso Manso.

It is hard to convey what an event the inauguration was. New school buildings are rare in this impoverished country and especially so in areas that are so far off the beaten track. Yet rural Ethiopians know that education is their best hope for a better life and a new school is a signal of a new beginning and a new chance for their children. It is an important event in the life of the community – a sign to one and all that a milestone has been reached and a success achieved by the village.

On the day of the inauguration every important education official and local official within 50 miles attended along with several hundred members of the community and, of course, the students. We managed to get our Land Cruiser right to the school site and along the way noticed women dressed in their finest clothes walking towards the school carrying large pots of gumfo and chiko, favoured local dishes which we knew would be served as part of the feast following the inauguration. Everywhere people were streaming towards Kasso Manso and you could feel the electricity in the air.

At the school grounds half a dozen large tents had been erected for the dignitaries. Food was being carried to and fro and the local television station had somehow managed to get a cameraman and camera 12 kilometres down the road to Kasso Manso. At the start of the festivities we were greeted by some 25 Ethiopian horsemen in a traditional Oromo welcome. Horses racing frantically, but in unison, up and down the school grounds coming within yards of the assembled guests. And those guys could ride! Most of the riders were dressed in traditional garb though two sported western suits and ties. Regardless of their clothing all rode with great skill and pomp…most of the horses festooned with red bunting and riding at top speed just inches from each other. This was followed by a procession of respected women from Kasso Manso all dressed in colourful traditional dresses, waving branches over their heads and chanting in unison as they greeted us.

Then came the speeches, all of them expressing gratitude and reflecting the community’s strong commitment to education. One graduate of the elementary school had gone on to great things becoming a senior official in the Ethiopian Development Bank. He had driven all night to attend the inauguration and gave a wonderful talk to an adoring community about the value of education. Maureen spoke for EBA telling the community of the empathy of her fellow Canadian employees for the people of this community so many thousands of miles away.

The community took advantage of the many relatively well-to-do visitors and held an auction to raise money for a library and laboratory for the school. This was done with an auction conducted by two very funny villagers intent on entertaining the majority of those in attendance who could not afford to bid. Every bid was treated with an anecdote about the bidder and feigned sympathy and comments for the bidder who had just been trumped. Further bids were elicited by one auctioneer removing clothes and threatening to bare all unless more bids were forthcoming. The items auctioned were a painting commemorating the inauguration, a very fat sheep and a pot full of for its next project….a school library and laboratory. The community was exhorted to drop their donations onto a large shawl laid out on the ground…and many did so. It struck us that this new project was made to order for Partners. It was a project selected by the community and one to which the community was prepared to commit its own scarce resources. So, as the donations began to flag we announced that whatever amount was in the shawl in another 15 minutes would be matched by Partners. This caused an unbelievable flurry of activity as everyone rushed to the shawl to “double their money”. We were later to discover that 241 single Birr (about ten cents) had been deposited with many more donations of larger denominations. It appears that more than 300 donations were made in the last 15 minutes and Kasso Manso got a good leg up on its next project.

It was a great feeling driving back to our rooms that night. We’d witnessed several thousand people celebrating the education of their kids and their accomplishment (as always, Partners had required the community to put up a significant portion of the costs in cash, labour and local materials) in empowering their own community. The kids in Kasso Manso were no longer going to have to take notes in class sitting on rocks, they could get a drink of water when the hot African sun made them thirsty and they could use latrines when they needed them. I had no doubt that the banker who had driven all night to get to the inauguration was going to be joined by more successful graduates of Kasso Manso in the years to come.

And good on you, EBA. You have done much to bridge the gap between our very wealthy and privileged people and those of rural Ethiopia. Your efforts have changed the lives of the Kasso Manso community.

On the Road from Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar is the capitol of Gojam, the central region of Ethiopia, and is often referred to as the 'breadbasket” of the country because of the cereal crops it produces (mainly Teff used to make injera, the bread which is eaten every day). The people in Gojam are mainly Amheric and known for their hard work. Gojam is also a very poor part of the county and one where Partners in the Horn of Africa is heavily engaged with several Ethiopian 'partner' NGOs (non- Governmental organizations...usually charities). Among our projects in Gojam is our Ophan fostering project where we have placed 200 HIV orphans with extended family members and a Group Home for teenage orphan girls attending high school. We have also built a Women's Center in, several classroom blocks, clean water wells and a school library. We like working in Gojam and there is a real need in the Region.

This trip to Gojam was to check out possible projects in Adet and Finote Selam, two villages a few hours drive from Bahir Dar. We always love visiting Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana with its world famous monasteries where legend has it that the Ark of the Covenant was first hidden after its removal from Jerusalem and before its transfer to Axum in Northern Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie had a palace in Bahir Dar and is said to have always wanted to transfer the capitol from Addis Ababa to this lovely city with its wide boulevards and stately palm trees. Bahir Dar is the site of Partners' annual orphan picnic when we bring the 200 kids enrolled in our fostering project to the big city for two days of partying, awards, soccer matches and sightseeing. This year's picnic is imminent and we spent some time in he city finalizing arrangements for the kids. We also visited the general hospital which is the only full service, referral hospital for 5 million (yes, 5,000,000) people in Gojam. We recently received a donation of 21 hospital beds and had to make arrangements for their delivery by container later in the spring. Then we were off to Adet for a second visit to an amazing project.

Ato (Mr.) Desta Moges is a recently retired civil servant and the head of the project we were to visit in Adet, an hour or so out of Bahir Dar. On retirement last year, Desta turned his house and compound into an orphanage and kindergarten. There are 30 street kid/orphans living in the sheds erected in his housing compound and another 63 kids attend, free of charge, the kindergarten he has started for destitute town kids. Ten of the kids in the kindergarten are also orphans who live with extended family members in the town. The kindergarten classes are held in Desta's former home which also serves as an office for the charity he has registered and who would be our 'partner' in any joint venture. The teachers in the kindergarten are retired or younger volunteers and are paid less than $20 a month. Like Desta they are all caring individuals who are making great sacrifices to assist the people in the town where they grew up.

Funding for the project to date has come entirely from Desta's savings and pension and from one of his sons who works in Addis Ababa and who has contributed approximately $10,000 to date.

It didn't take Yehalem, our Country Representative, and I long to decide that Desta's organization fit the Partners' bill. It was an indigenous charity where the community itself had taken charge and was doing good work with virtually no overhead. A committee, headed by Desta, and with representatives of the various government services in Adet makes all key decisions relating to the Project and has been able to arrange such things as free health services and waiver of school registration fees for the orphan kids and to assist in the selection of destitute street kids. The community had, in fact, taken the lead and now needed assistance to carry on. When a community commits itself...as Desta and his friends had...to support a project with their own meagre funds and labour, that is a sure sign of a real need and of the kind of continuing support which any successful project must have. Our visit to Adet also confirmed the desperate situation of the street kids. They told us that prior to the project they picked up a few cents each day acting as porters at the local bus station but relied on begging scraps from local restaurants and bars to live on. Now those kids have their own beds, are enrolled in school and, for the first time, have some hope for the future. Partners will be helping Desta.

Then it was off to Finote Selam, a thriving community south of Bahir Dar and famous for it's ability to grow almost any crop in its balmy climate. The big problem in the area is a lack of bridges...a need which requires some explanation. In Ethiopia and most of sub-Saharan Africa 85% of the population live “off road” a term used to indicate that people live neither in towns nor cities but in extended family clusters, usually miles from the nearest center. Town centers must be accessed regularly for three basic reasons: for access to open air markets one or two days a week where virtually all rural commerce is transacted: for medical centers where the sick must be attended to and, lastly, for schools. Africans, and Ethiopians in particular, are great walkers and a 4-5 kilometre hike to town presents no problems .....except in the three month rainy season, when small stream become raging torrents that make crossing impossible. When the rivers can't be crossed there is no access to markets, health care or school. And, inevitably, there are drownings when rising rivers are forded. It is common for 5,000 to 10,000 people to cross a river on a market day so that an impassable river denies basic and essential services for thousands of people for three months each year.

Partners in the Horn of Africa is getting good at building footbridges. (There is no need for vehicle bridges in rural areas for villagers who can't begin to think of buying a car and Ethiopia's per capita income is less than $150 per year). We build bridges in 6 meter sections prefabricated in an urban area and then transferred to the stream side where they are welded together. The bridges are 1.5 metres in width, wide enough for a fully loaded donkey but just narrow enough to make sure vehicles, which require far greater support, are not tempted to cross) Local residents provide rocks for the concrete foundations used as anchors on either side of the river and eucalyptus for scaffolding when the bridge is being erected.

I have attached a picture of the crossing of a proposed bridge site near Finote Selam. This picture was taken when the river was at its lowest level. Two months before this picture was taken the waters level would have been over waist level and moving quickly.. The picture of the elderly lady crossing the stream was taken after the water levels had largely receded and yet we were nervous for her with each step she took. at a site where many have been swept downriver to their deaths. Residents told us of walking for a full day to arrive at the river when it was too high to ford and showed us the tree under which they slept for days waiting for the water level to drop. An inconvenience when you're going to market; a matter of life and death if you are transporting a child with malaria to the local Health Clinic.

We have commissioned the building of at least one bridge near Finote Selam. It will cost us somewhere in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 (competitive bids are now being sought). It will last for years and save many lives in the process. It will also allow many more kids to complete their education. Interestingly, one of the main proponents of the bridge we are building is an opthomologist who was able to complete his studies only because he had an aunt “on the other side of the river” where his parents sent him to attend school. Imagine if Canadian kids had to move to a relative's home to attend school or risk their lives getting there each day and knowing that, even if they could get their some days, they would still miss a month or two of school each year.

The bridge near Finote Selam will save lives and improve education for many, many children. This will be Partners' 8th bridge. It won't be our last.

My next report will be from the Bale Mountains of Ethiopia's central region. We are going there to inaugurate a new school, check on the progress of another bridge and 10 sets of school latrines and commence a project fabricating and distributing washable sanitary pads to 4,000 school girls.

November at Partners

November is an exciting time at the offices of Partners in the Horn of Africa. This is the time when we line up, tentatively, projects for the coming year in Ethiopia. The process is exhilarating but also demanding. The exhilarating part is easy enough to understand. We receive proposals for literally dozens of projects, all of which could make a huge difference in the lives of the people of Ethiopia. It is rewarding for all of us in the office to know that every decision to go ahead with a project is going to have a direct impact on a community. That impact might involve bringing clean water to a village, a Group Home to street kids in town or desks and classrooms to kids that now attend classes in makeshift structures. November is also the time when donations start building up their momentum and when begin to feel confident that we will indeed reach the goals we set up at he start of the year. We are also getting ready for our field trips to Ethiopia. Dave Cosco, a fellow director and I go early each year after the rainy season to check out existing projects and, with our Country Representative in Ethiopia, to make final decisions for projects in the coming year.

But November is also a demanding time. At Partners we have learned that spending money wisely in a developing country is much more challenging than we first realized and, in many ways, more difficult than raising money. In part that is because Partners’ focus is on empowering Ethiopian civil society to play a major role in the country’s development. It’s one thing to say that; it is quite another to set up the proper checks and balances that will ensure that our Ethiopian ‘partners’ meet the standards which our donors expect of us: spending funds carefully and getting competitive bids on construction and supplies; adhering to rigorous reporting criteria, involving villagers in providing labour and supplies. The temptation for an international aid organization is always to hire a large contractor, give it the go ahead to build the school and then sit back and wait for the gala opening. That kind of aid is easier to deliver but misses the point of empowering local people.

Only by working painstakingly with our ‘partners’ and involving local people at every step of the way can we bring about lasting changes in the delivery of developmental assistance. Yes, “It takes a village”; it takes time working with ‘partners’ focusing, not so much on the end product but, rather, on the journey to that product. So, at this time of year we are regularly insisting that the proposals we receive be revised to address our basic criteria; 15-20% local contribution, lean competitive prices developed by efficient tendering of project components in the local market, strict accountability of funds and adherence to contracts signed between us and our ‘partners’. This is the harder, invisible-to-our-donors part of our work but we know we are on the right path, that the Partners’ model of assisting the third world is a good model and one which we must scrupulously adhere to. And we are regularly rewarded by seeing our ‘partners’ grow with us, becoming more sophisticated and competent in their operations. In part that development is traceable to our recent emphasis on ‘capacity building, ‘ an omnibus term used in the developing world to describe aid that assists an indigenous group become more efficient and capable agents of change rather than mere “beneficiaries”. The kind of ‘capacity building’ that we are doing at Partners can involve purchasing computers for administrative staff in the offices of our Ethiopian ‘partners’, or conducting workshops on how to they should ‘evaluate’ a project and measure its success.

I leave for Ethiopia in early December and will stay for a little over three months. Dave will join me in February along with his wife, Gina, who will be putting together the washable sanitary pads manufacture and distribution project planned for the Bale Mountain Region. Also, early in the New Year some of our supporters will visit the country. Increasingly our donors want to see our projects first hand. They usually come in January or February (always a good time to be out of Canada) and combine their visit with some tourism. Many visitors find the trip ‘transformational’ and a few now visit every year.

My next report will be from the Land of Prester John, as Ethiopia was often referred to in European medieval literature. This was a reference to a kingdom in North Africa, known to be Christianized with an intelligent and enlightened king. Historians consider these references to be to Ethiopia which was Christianized in the 4^th century A.D. and where “Johannes” was a common name of early emperors.

Report from Amist Kilo - December 17, 2006

(Apologies that the "posted" blog dates don't match; we’ve had to rebuild the blog.)

Amist Kilo is the older part of Addis Ababa and the neighbourhood where I live when I am over here.

The plane taking me from Frankfurt to Addis Ababa, via Khartoum, landed at Bole International Airport at 10 p.m. last Friday night, some 25 hours after leaving Vancouver early Thursday morning. I chuckled, as I always do, at the airport sign for the Immigration Control indicating the proper queue for “Aliens”. I felt a bit out of place in the line for foreigners. It has been almost 20 years since my first trip to Addis Ababa and Ethiopia is feeling more and more like home.

Over the first few days in Addis Ababa I reviewed the status of our current projects with our Ethiopian “partners” and Yehalem Metiku, our new Country Representative in Ethiopia. The last year has been a difficult one for Partners in the Horn of Africa. With our rapid growth has come the usual administrative headaches of a growing organization. The problems are rapidly coming under control and the new systems we are introducing should allow us to concentrate more on the real work at hand: helping Ethiopians to handle the problems of Ethiopia.

AWWA and the North Wollo Silk Production Project

As I reviewed many of our projects with AWWA, a wonderful Ethiopian Charity that focuses on the problems of vulnerable women and children, I felt a great deal of pride in the work they have done with our cooperation. This month the first shipment of silk from our home based silk production project in North Wollo came to market. Under this project housebound mothers are given a few hundred small silkworms, a carton and a daily supply of castor leaves (grown at our compound in the town of Kobo) to feed to the tiny worms. Over a three week period the worms increase in size 10,000 times! Then they form cocoons and from these cocoon the women spin silk which can be sold in Addis Ababa. After a year of struggling with this project (finding land to grow the castor, teaching the women how to feed the silkworms and care for the cocoons and then proper spinning techniques) the final test came when the spun silk went to market for grading. With any home-based industry the quality of production can vary tremendously and our access to an assured market was dependent on producing first rate silk. So, we were delighted when 95% of our product received the highest grade possible. The women are overjoyed and now see that they have access to a regular income..not a large one but a constant one that will improve their lives immeasurably.

Our School in Mindena

It is very rewarding to review...as I did yesterday...the progress on our projects. They are having a huge impact on those people in Ethiopia where the projects are. Yesterday I reviewed pictures of a school we are building in Mindena town in Wollo, a very poor part of the country. 4 years ago when I first visited the community the men in the town had build a bamboo shed that you could see through...about 18 x 24 with the kids sitting on rocks and logs....no desks, no blackboard and, of course, no water or electricity. It was awful. There was a much air space as bamboo on the vertical siding. The school was built so that the youngest children at least would be spared the two hour walk down a mountain side to the nearest school. We started helping them and today they have 2 large cement classroom blocks that are furnished and this year we'll build another block so that kids from Grade 1-4 will be able to avoid the walk. The new school would not be out of place in rural B.C. and has given the entire community something to be proud of and makes the precarious notion of education a much more compelling and possible outcome for about 1,000 people. (This community, by the way, is at the top of the world...about 12,000 feet above sea level and, until we built a footbridge, was completely cut off from the nearest town for three months of the rainy season. And this is just one project. The others are allowing widows and divorcees to start their own businesses, communities to have clean water and schools to be upgraded etc. etc.

Grarbet Ledekuman Polio Clinic

On Thursday of this week Yehalem and I drove to the Grarbet Ledekuman Clinic in the town of Butajira where Partners’ project, undertaken in partnership with the Clinic, offers post polio surgery, physiotherapy and, ultimately, crutches and braces to 100 kids. Polio is largely eradicated today but Ethiopian villages are full of kids, usually over 10, who were polio victims before the disease was brought under control. Most of these kids had no medical care and their leg (usually only one leg is affected) shrivelled and the ligaments profoundly constricted Unable to walk most of the children would have been consigned to a life of begging or being cared for by other family members. With the Butajira project, Partners arranged to bring in a medical team to the local hospital from the capital, Addis Ababa. The kids came there with family members to begin a process that would change their lives.. Before and after the operation the children stayed at the Grarbet Ledekuman facility. Each day several kids underwent an operation that freed up and stretched their constricted ligaments.. A cast is applied after the operation and when the wound is healed the child undergoes extensive physiotherapy with a leg that can now be stretched and where the ligaments are not bound. After a period of physiotherapy at the Clinic the children will be fitted with leg braces or crutches. They will then be able to walk instead of crawl and will be able to look for regular work. The simple operation will change their lives. The pictures show some of the children recuperating after their operation. 100% of the administration and medical work of this project was Ethiopian. All that was needed from our end was modest funding to cover the costs of the medical personnel (who were using their vacation time to assist) and material for the crutches and braces. Another really great project that is going to give a 100 kids a new lease on life.

So, it has been a great first week in Ethiopia. The weather has been great…about 20 during the daytime, and very cool at night and in the early mornings. The rains are now over and my garden is in full bloom. Hard to believe but we counted 17 different fruits and vegetables growing in our compound. Everything from coffee to lemons. It’s great to be back.

Our New Partners In The Horn Of Africa Blog

I have been told that a blog will be a great way to keep in touch while I am away in Ethiopia for the next three months! This will go along with our soon to be finished new website!

The donation response to our latest newsletter (Issue 7 - November 2006) has been very enthusiastic, and is going to allow us to do even more work in 2007 --- thanks! Please let us know at the home office in Enderby (250-838-2111) if you didn't get a copy.

Best wishes,
John

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