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.