Women and Children Living on the Streets

Greetings from Hawassa!

From Marty:

Today our friend/assistant/anthrology student/translator Dagim and I launched the project that grew out of last week's sojourn to Hawassa's streets to take photographs of women beggars and street children. I talked to him about my desire to know more about the circumstances that led to their situation and how they were able to survive. I told him that I had no desire to embarrass Ethiopians, who are in my experience immoderately compassionate and moral and very proud. I feel though, that this is a crime inflicted by the international community, for which my country is culpable as well, since so much of its resources are spent on war and the military, and so little on support of the women and children of the world. [Elliot takes issue with this see the end]

Agreed, we began to walk down the street towards town. It was fairly early on Saturday morning and Dagim said that we might not be able to find many kids, since they seem to show up at Hawassa University gates around noon to beg for food and money. Students say that if they get on campus they steal the shoes that students leave on their window sills and porches. Thus the guards do not let them on campus, or try not to.

Little boys "fishing" in the gutter

But within a quarter of a mile we were drawn to three little boys hunkered down in the deep (about four feet) gutters between the street and sidewalk. It has been raining daily, sometimes heavily and the gutters have water in them. We asked the boys what they were doing and they told us they were “fishing” and showed us a dirty plastic bottle filled with water and some unidentifiable small creatures (USC's) – bugs, tadpoles, who knows. Later we asked them what they were going to do with the USC's and they told us they would take them to Lake Hawassa and liberate them, dump them in. 

We asked them if they had had breakfast and they hadn't though by then it was about 10 am, so we took them to a nearby cafe, where the waitress at first looked askance, but then warmed up. We ordered them eggs, at first only two portions for three kids, but soon realized our mistake. They ate ravenously and were jealous of their food and one was afraid of sharing. To prevent threatened violence, we ordered a third portion and things settled down.

Boy, age 7?

Boy, age 6?

Boy, age 5?

None of them was truly sure of his age, but they decided on 5, 6 and 7. All three were truly delightful: bouncy, polite (except about the food) and talkative. All were born in Hawassa, and two had lost their fathers and their mothers were living (and probably begging) at the large central Orthodox church, St. Gabriel's, about a mile away from where we found them. They didn't stay with their mothers, but slept on the street together with other street children under an awning across from the bus station. They said the children “cared for each other”, were often chased away from where they tried to sleep, but were actually protected and watched out for by the local police. Both of them had been to school for a little while, but one left because he couldn't pay for his school supplies and the children “acted badly” toward him. The other left because his shoes were stolen at school and his mother beat him because of that. He said she beat him often. He was the quietest and most reserved of the three.

The third child had both parents and he slept with them in a cardboard and plastic structure built by the father next to the Hawassa dump in Korem (sp?). He had never been to school, though he thought he was the oldest.

How did they get food? They begged in front of the University, house to house and from restaurants from which they received leftovers. Were they hungry? Always. They begged food from Ethiopians but money from Ferenjis (foreigners). What did they spend money on? Biscuits, bread and candy. Did anyone every try to hurt or beat them? This was interesting, as by now a crowd of older boys, young adolescents, had gathered around where we were sitting in an outdoor cafe until they were forcefully chased away by cafe management. The three told us that these and other boys with homes and families beat them and stole their money. However, each of the three after finishing his breakfast, cheerfully took leftover bread and gave it to an older boy, without appearing to respond to force or threats. It seemed this was a more complicated relationship than we would be able to understand.

Did adults hurt them? Sometimes, but they had more trouble with the “big boys”. Was there any support from organizations or the adult community for them? None that they could name except for the informal network of restaurants and individual Hawassans that fed them.

Their clothes were given to them and they didn't remember ever having any immunizations. They sometimes picked up discarded pills off the street. (We had a doctor-patient chat about that one.)

Dagim and the guys.

Finally we asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Two wanted to be pilots and one of them illustrated by brrrrm, brrrrming with arms spread around the cafe. The third wanted to be a doctor.

We left, both shaken by the combination of their sweet, childish exuberance and the mammoth adult tasks they undertook each day for survival.

We made our way to Dagim's Orthodox church where impoverished people camp out at the street entrance. As we approached, two women were talking as one washed her clothes in a plastic basin and the other combed her young daughter's hair. We asked if we could talk to them and sat down on the street. A third woman joined our conversation after a while and several men gathered around to listen.

Washing her clothes on he street.

The youngest woman, probably very early twenties, had come from an Oromia village four years ago after a fight with her family. As the conversation went on, it turned out she had been raped as a girl in her village and had become infected with HIV. She left for Hawassa because she was told by another woman that she could give her a job, but when she arrived, she could find neither the woman nor the job. She met a man and married him, but he left her. She came to the church entrance where she has lived now for several years, finding and settling in with a neighbor from her village who is also living there. She sleeps on the ground with no protection from the rain.

Mother and two children

Homeless woman with friend;s child

That neighbor and friend is the mother who was combing her four-year-old's hair. She also has a one-year-old boy and they live in a cardboard and plastic structure on the street. Because she has children, the officials at the SNNPR** finance office that owns the wall they lean and sleep against allowed her to build her little house. She came to Hawassa because her first husband was the victim of sorcery and was crazy. She brought him, with his hands tied, to the church to receive holy water for a cure. However, he ran away from her and, since she had a child and no home, she could not work and was forced to stay on the street.

Homeless woman.

The third woman was from a town in SNNPR several hundred kilometers away. She found out she was HIV-infected eight years ago and came to Hawassa to find work. She also married here and lives with her husband in another cardboard and plastic structure. She has no children.

The women said that they get their food from the church or from the parishioners on their way to the church, particularly in holiday season like Easter, just passed. They also beg, though the mother ruefully admitted her shame at begging. They are helped with food and perhaps other things by SOS Children, an NGO whose office we have seen in town. They are allowed to use the sanitary facilities at the church.

The two women with HIV said they receive medicines from the clinic at Referral Hospital, which gave me some satisfaction. However, one woman says that she frequently misses meds because she has no food and taking the pills on an empty stomach makes her ill. All women said they are frequently hungry.

Do they feel safe where they are? This received a complicated answer. They said that the men who lived on the street frequently stole or tried to steal from them and they – the men, including their husbands – would get drunk and then try to pick fights with the women. Interestingly enough, the women stood up to the men and also called upon the security guards at the office next door, who protected them. We were not in a private enough situation that either one of us felt comfortable about asking about sexual violence.

What about the children? Mama said that her children had never been vaccinated, but she had, with the support of parishioners, taken them to the doctor when sick. In fact, her baby was recovering from malaria for which she had received medicine at the clinic. She nursed him and he fell asleep as we talked. The little girl, who sat next to me throughout our conversation, goes to preschool at the church where her fees are paid by Orthodox deacons in Addis Ababa. (Dagim smiled at this. He is a deacon.)

Woman in house she shares with her husband.

What are their and dreams? Unanimous: A house and a job. No more, no less.

 

We thanked them profusely, gave them what money we had, took pictures and left. Afterward we spoke together of our wonder at the honesty and strength of those we had encountered, amazed at our good fortune at meeting such people in a world that is harsh and pretty unforgiving.

Stay well, appreciate your neighbors and we miss you.

Marty and Ell

Elliot takes issue with what I said in the beginning and I respect his thoughts. He does not agree that that the international community is responsible for Ethiopia's poverty - they have their long hard history of feudal rule culminating with Haile Selassie as the basis of poverty and exploitation. He also does not think that the international donor community or humanitarian organizations can solve the poverty here, that countries like Ethiopia can and must solve internal poverty themselves, and are the only forces that can. This would include regulating the foreign businesses that do business here, giving peasants title to their farms but restricting small holder farm size to 100 hectares or less, and other measures. To be continued!

** SNNPR – Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region, the large province that Hawassa is in.

Orthodox Easter at Hawassa University: Melkem Fasika

Deacon drumming and students singing as they prepare for procession to church

Yesterday was Easter in Ethiopia, a week later than in Europe and the US. Easter is Ethiopia's biggest holiday. Preparations begin two months in advance with the strict observance of Lent by believers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. No meat, no fish or chicken, no dairy and many do not have their first meal before mid-afternoon for sixty days. Thus Easter celebration includes a big component of breaking the fast. Observant Orthodox go to church on Saturday evening -- many of them having fasted all day -- and sing and pray until 3 am when they believe the Resurrection occurred. At that time they go home and begin Easter feasting with the delicious, spicy Ethiopian chicken stew, doro wot. Then they sleep and next morning begin a whole day of continuous eating and drinking. In the week prior, chickens, goats and cattle wandered the streets of Hawassa in huge numbers, unmindful of the mass slaughter to take place on Saturday and Sunday in preparation for the celebration.

Women students singing praise and dancing.

Male students with reeds around their heads, and turbans for the deacons.

 
On Saturday we joined the students at Hawassa University for their prayer walk from campus to St. Trinity church. We are always amazed how religious and devout most/many/all Ethiopians are. These are Orthodox Christian students with their own deacons. Women walk on one side, men on the other, with deacons leading the prayers and songs and drumming in the middle.
 

Students singing.

 We were with Rhobot, our neighbor/friend/first year student, and Dagim, Ell's student and a deacon explaining everything step by step. He said, "We are thanking Mary for bringing us Jesus, who has today ascended into heaven, his resurrection has made it possible for all of us to go to heaven." They were actually singing all this, in a beautiful melodic procession.
 

Rhobot, Marty and Dagim (with deacon's staff)

Marty and Rhobot

Marty and Rhobot with marchers.

 Marty and Rhobot went to church while Ell stayed back to help a young Englishman fix his motorcycle (Ell's religion). Marty and Rhobot were a bit concerned about the total patriarchy and male dominance in the church. Still, it was lovely.

Rhobot and Dagim.

Friends Walelign and Beza (left) and Dagim.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 At noon Sunday we at lamb tibs and stomach with Rhobot's family, and later that evening doro wat (Ethiopian chicken curry) and more tibs with friends and colleagues Walelign and Beza. Nice Easter with nice friends!

Rhobot and her mom at lunch in their apartment.

Marty with Rhobot's uncle, aunt and cousins for lunch.

Marty with Walelign's brother and Beza at their parents' house for Easter tibs and doro wat.

Students singing.

Walking to St. Trinity

 .

Black Saturday Addendum

Mother and child on Piazza

 Greetings from Hawassa!

Did not expect to write so soon, but an incident today has me pondering. We were visited yesterday by a young British man motorcycling to South Africa. His cycle needs repair and, while he and Elliot went to look for parts this morning, I jogged and walked to Lake Hawassa and then along the Lake to the main street downtown, Piazza. After lunch with Ell and Tom, I rode my bike down Piazza, but stopped to take a picture of a mother and her child. I sat on the curb with the mother and took her picture, then arose to continue on my journey, but was confronted by a young man in western dress getting out of a bajaj. He asked me why I was taking the picture, that he had heard people walking by wanting to know. I said at first that it was because I thought the mother and her child were beautiful (True, please see picture), but he wasn't satisfied and said that they were not beautiful, they were poor. I then said that the poverty and suffering of poor people in Hawassa disturbed me and I wanted my friends in my country to see that suffering as I did. He said that "people" were saying that, to the contrary, I was taking pictures of them because they were black. I was taken aback. He then said that I wanted to sell the pictures to make money. I laughed, and said that just wasn't true and that if anyone asks, he should tell them so. I said that I was a doctor at Referral Hospital and he said he was a medical student there. I invited him to find me there and we shook hands.

Baby with orange

But I was left with more moral queries as I walked to my bike. I realized that though the obvious criticism of what I was doing -- that I was prostituting poor people for gain through photographing them -- was not true, there was another aspect to these pictures that I needed to confront. Ethiopians are profoundly proud people, never conquered and overall resistant to the kind of the debasing corruption that is the scourge of so many of the formerly-colonized nations of Africa. To try to pay the restaurant bill for an Ethiopian friend one must be willing to risk one's life and health in the struggle.

By photographing beggars I am exposing the weakness of Ethiopian society, the desperate poverty of most of its people, and I have the feeling it is seen as shameful and embarrassing to that society. Of course these pictures are taken among any others depicting the growing middle class, students, the gorgeous landscape, etc., but I think that I may be stepping on some delicate toes, and I should consider that.

Thus I pondered for the few seconds it took me to walk to my bike where, to my dismay, I found that my ugly old purple pack with my wallet, passport, credit cards, and beloved water bottle in it, was no longer in my bike basket. Dumb, but I had left it, I thought, for a few seconds to take the picture. I looked at the mother and she looked at me. I just stood there for several minutes trying to figure out what to do when a gang of teenage boys came running up holding the pack. Neither my Amharic nor their English was sufficient for me to get the story: where they got it, who stole it, etc. But they gave it back to me with nothing gone. Meanwhile a policeman came up and I told what had happened, which I doubt he understood, but the gang spoke to him. We all were satisfied, shook hands, and I rode away, thinking that, as Elliot and I have said about many experiences in our lives, We are too dumb to be doing this.

Your comments are welcome.

Marty

A walk on Good Friday: Suffer the Little Children

Mother and Child

Greetings from Hawassa!

Marty's Good Friday walk downtown: Suffer the Little Children

Ever since I came upon children rising from their sleep in a culvert under a driveway next to a thoroughfare, I have wanted to know more about the street people, mainly the children and mothers, of Hawassa. When we firenjis (Europeans) walk or bike downtown we are accosted and our consciences assaulted by beggars of all ages in torn clothing and no shoes asking for birr. At first I tried to eliminate them from my sphere of responsibility by labeling the children as urchins set up by adults for their own purposes. But the picture of those very small children waking alone from their hole under the road belied that fiction. They may be preyed on by adults, true, but they are essentially alone and vulnerable and have the right to assault the conscience of us lucky adults. 

Friends

Tough customer (or not!)

Tough customer with serious friend.

I had wanted to try to do some interviews, hiring a U. Hawassa student to help. However, the students have been gone on anthropological trips to the rest of Ethiopia, and this is a long weekend – today is Good Friday as Sunday is Easter by Ethiopian calendar – and I decided to do it in a much less formal way. I took my camera, my backpack and 200 birr and went for a walk to downtown Hawassa. To those who asked for money, I gave, and then asked if it was ok to take a picture. Always the answer was yes. 

Mother and Child

However, the process itself was not without its ethical burden. Despite their very public presence and open request for money, I still felt like a voyeur towards the adults. I felt like I was commoditizing the children. I did my best to make things more human – showed them the pictures, asked their names and thanked them – but still know that I was paying them for the only thing they have – their visages.

Disabled young man.

Disabled elderly man

The last four kids I photographed followed me home where I asked friend Beza to translate. Three were brothers, Woleyta ethnicity from Hawassa, whose parents had died and who were living in town with their aunt who sent them out on the street to collect cardboard, presumably to sell. The oldest appeared to be about 11 years old, his brothers probably 6 and 4. They all may be older – I think they were stunted. I gave them the bananas I had bought for Ell and they begged for shoes. I said I didn't have the money but hope that I can do it in the future. The fourth was a Sidama child, also 11 or so, living on the street with an older friend who had traveled with him from a nearby village after his mother was unable to care for him. His father had died.

Three brothers who accompanied me on my way home.

As we walked down the street, a group of students was walking towards us. One broke off from the crowd and came up to the oldest brother and deliberately shoved him. I stepped in and glared, then asked the child if he faces violence frequently. He said yes. Our conversation was limited to my total of about 50 Amharic words and his similar English capacity. A lot of sign language. As always, thank God for Beza and Walelign.

Also included is a picture from the store where I buy eggs – colorful and friendly.

Shouk for eggs.

Happy Easter and Good Pesach!

Mother and Child

Another sunset from our bedroom window.

Another anthropological journey, rainbows and a microbiological news flash

Gama-Gofu statue in downtown Arba Minich.

Greetings from Hawassa!

Just two days back from a magnificent journey to Ethiopia's Southwest, the least developed and most ethnically diverse part of this intricately woven country. On Saturday we left with friends /neighbors/colleague Walelign Tadesse and Beza Negewo in an old Toyota Landcruiser with a worn-out battery that always required push-starting, bald tires, no windshield wipers or horn and several doors that didn't/usually didn't open/close driven by a khat-chewing man who spoke only Amharic. Without Beza and Walelign we probably would have been roadkill. With them – Wale an Ethiopian anthropologist/historian and Beza a gender studies expert – life was sweet, the journey pleasant, and the learning process at its max.

Ell, Beza and Marty with collected kids next to an abandoned graveyard in Arba Minich.

The Southern Omo Zone of SNN (Southern Nations and Nationalities Region) has the reputation among urban Ethiopians as the wild and wooly west (although southwest), the region of tribal peoples where women wear amazing body ornamentation and men carry AK-47s. The Omo is one of Ethiopia’s four main rivers (with the Nile, the Awash in the northwest where Lucy (Denkenesh in Amhara) was found, and the Shabelle which flows into Somalia in the southeast). Ultimately the government hopes to dam all these rivers for hydroelectric power and irrigation agriculture, for food and export crops (rice, sugar cane, biofuels). This does not forebode well for the tribal peoples who live there.

Ethnographic map from South Omo research Center

The Omo River flows into Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya – it is a dry sparsely inhabited region, with anthropologically fascinating groups including the Mursi (the folks with the lip-plates), Hamer (where women were beautiful red dyed ringlets), Nyangatom, Bodi and about a dozen other small tribes. They are all cattle people, some with cultivation along the river beds, some more nomadic, and they all have reputations for being very fierce in battle and demanding of tourists.

Our first day took us through the town of Shashemene (where Haile Selassie invited Jamaican Rastafarians to live) where we turned west through the region of Muslim Alaba people where men wore tall straw hats instead of toqiyahs (Muslim cap). We then passed through the Wolayta region with its central city of Sodo. Wolayta were severely punished for their resistance to the Menelik empire at the end of the last century and now are allied with the Tigrayan government.

Walelign and Beza have a drink and conversation

Little boy with crippled leg in Arba Minich.

Our goal for the night was Arba Minich (“40 Springs”) a town between two of Ethiopia’s Rift Valley lakes, Lake Abeya and Lake Chamo. Lake Chamo is famous for its crocodiles, and Elliot had traveled there earlier with Adam and Emilia where they saw crocs that were fourteen feet long. This time Wale, Beza, Marty and Elliot went to the “crocodile ranch”, a funky place in the woods and swamp next to Lake Chamo which housed hundreds of young crocodiles in wet pens . This was a state-owned farm, and the croc hides are sold (probably to China) and their meat keeps the next generation going. (“Sorry Dad!” Gulp.) Actually it was quite awesome, as some of these photos show.

All we need is love at Crocodile Farm on Lake Chama.

Hard not to anthropomorphize with this one: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crocs decide we are too skinny to bother with

Baboon eating our bread

Wild wart hogs munching near the Crocodile Farm.

 No battery, no wipers, bald tires, but hey, it's a ride!

The people who live in the area around the lake are the Gama-Gofu. This is a rich agricultural area that produces the bananas that feed the rest of Ethiopia, including the satisfied passengers in our car. Banana king Elliot was in heaven.

Gama-Gofa banana market next to the lake approaching Arba Minich.

The next day we headed to Konso, the name of the town and the people who live around it. The Konso live on the top of mountainous ridges in amazingly dense, sculpted villages, each with neat stone terraces for crops and stone-walled neighborhoods. Everything is made from rocks. These hamlets are very old – people have lived there for hundreds (if not a thousand) years. As the population expands, the inhabitants make a new ring around the old village, on and on until there are about seven or eight concentric walls with dense neighborhoods inside them. Our colleague at Hawassa, Awoke (pronounced a-who-kay), had worked to help make the Konso villages into a UNESCO World Heritage site, a major achievement which adds these villages to the three other UNESCO sites in the orthodox north of Ethiopia - Lalibela, Axum, and Gondar. Awoke said the Konso built these walled towns as a defense against raiding neighbors, they were considered quite wealthy last century although they looked pretty impoverished to us. The village had very narrow pathways, creating a maze of routes past houses or open men’s areas, where elders sat and drank local beer and played the ubiquitous mankala board game. 

Konso meeting house

Men sitting outside their houses in Konso village.

Konso man plowing with oxen in valley

As with much cultural tourism in Ethiopia, we had to pay a fee to the local tour cooperative, which was fine as we had a very good guide take us to one of the villages. We had tried earlier to enter the village, but did not have our paperwork (as the tour office was closed) and Wale argued with local residents. But when we returned everyone was friendly. Actually the cooperatives are a good way to organize the tourism, although Walelign says most of the money goes directly to the federal government and not to the residents of the villages. 

Wale demonstrates his masculinity lifting enormous stone that
 Konso young men must throw in initiation rites.

Ell, assured of his masculinity, 
need not lift heavy rocks.

Young girl braiding her sister's hair in Konso village.

Little boy uninterested in the tourists.

We slept that night in an “eco-friendly” lodge (of sorts), actually an organic farm started by an Irishman and his Ethiopian wife, with seven or eight bungalows on the hillside. Beza was a bit frightened (she’s a city girl) worrying about hyenas coming into her banda (house), but the only critter we saw was a cute kitty cat who tried to get into our house during a rain storm. Actually it rained on and off during much of our trip, which was good as Ethiopia really needs its spring rains, which were late and light this year. But sometimes as we drove we saw beautiful cloud formations, a bit hard to capture from a moving vehicle

Clouds coming out of the Rift Valley.

Clouds over the Rift Valley.

Lake Ayalo from the Dorze mountain.

The third day we drove across the flat and hot Rift Valley floor then up again to Jinka, a lovely town high on the western escarpment. This is the gateway to the Mago Park and the Mursi people on the Omo River. Marty vividly remembers at age 6 seeing pictures of Mursi women in a National Geographic with their huge, protruding clay lower lip plates. Do you remember it, too? But the trip would have been long and arduous, and people (and the Lonely Planet) said that visiting the Mursi villages was an ordeal as everyone hammers tourists for money to take their photo. That is the kind of tourism none of us like, so we let it be.

Mursi woman, National Geographic photo from the web

In Jinka we did visit the very interesting South Omo Research Center, a museum and center on top of a hill overlooking Jinka built by German anthropologist Ivo Strecker (who studied the Hamer people) with funds from German development (GTZ). The museum has wonderful exhibits, not just the artifacts of all the tribal people who live there (which were cool) but dialogue and texts written by Ivo’s students, including interviews with women comparing their roles and powers cross-culturally. Hamer women are expected to be beaten at the time of men's initiation, and scarring from that beating – and facial scarring as well – is a source of pride. Yet some also admitted that they feared it and some had foregone it. Another set of interviews explored the Mursi women's continued wearing of lip plates, a practice preserved though the government would like to see it abolished. Elliot has to admit that it is a huge leap of cultural relativism to accept the plates, which cut a hole below the lower lip and distort it so far that the woman can stretch her lip over her head. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but objectification of women can really go too far.

Hamer women at market.

Hamer women with cowry belts and gourd hat in market.

Hamer man in market.

Sulky Hamer teen (yes, it's universal) in market.

Adolescent Hamer girls.

The third leg of the tour took us back into the Rift Valley to visit the Hamer people, pastoralists who do some farming. After a long and hot drive, punctuated by a visit to a great local Hamer market, we came to the small town of Turmi. We had a pleasant lunch in an outdoor but shaded restaurant. This is Lent and all but the most westernized restaurants serve only fasting food with njera. Elliot had an egg sandwich and French fries that everyone dug into.

We hired a local guide and visited a Hamer village, which included a half dozen houses with large cattle kraals (but the cattle were out grazing,). These people are really spectacular looking: women with their hair in long twists augmented by red ochre, all wearing goatskin skirts with beadwork on them, and yellow and red neck and chest beads. We were surprised at how un-assimilated they were, at least in terms of dress, and what artifacts they had in their houses. This is different from Maasai and Samburu people we know from Kenya, who although still wear their beautiful beadwork, also wear western clothes.

But it got annoying when we were surrounded by teenage girls wanting their photo taken, for two birr each – not much, but when five to eight girls line up shoulder to shoulder, it adds up. We really wanted to see the village at its normal self, or at least have some explanation from the guide, but it was only a visit for photos which we got tired of. This is a new kind of tourism,sometimes called cultural or ethno or eco-toursim which brings well heeled Europeans, Americans, Japanese, etc. to exotic ethnic locales - a Maasai Village (or a Hamer village), or a visit to an Indian reservation, etc, that allows westerners to get a glimpse at how the 'other' lives. On one hand, it can be a good thing, it educates and maybe allows some empathy, but more often, as with our visit to Hamer, it beomes a commercial transaction, a quick photo shoot of the exotic that just reinforces stereotypes and prejudices. Yes, we had our photos taken also, but still felt this was a commodification of both women and non-westerners.

Young Hamer women.

Beza and young Hamer girls.

Young Hamer man recovering from initiation rite "jumping the bulls" the previous day

Hamer child and his pup (coveted by Elliot).

 Our visit was saved when  a male elder took Walelign by the hand to his house, and Wale came out and got Marty. Inside the traditional house lay a child, a girl about 8 years old, with a severely infected burn on her thigh. Marty said she had a very high fever and needed to get to a clinic pronto, so we ended our visit and  took the girl and her father back to Turmi to the local health clinic. Marty said that was the best part of visiting Hamer.

Taking a young girl and her dad to the health clinic

We headed back towards Arba Minich, in our rental car that could not start. (We had to push it every time it had been turned off. A Landcruiser is a very heavy car.) Around sunset we passed by a spectacular thunderstorm; we could see the whole Rift Valley as we ascended the very curvy road into back into the highlands. Elliot was genuine worried as he sat in the front seat. At least he had one of the two functioning seat belts on. Thoughts were on those bald tires.

We ended the trip with a visit to the Dorze, who are famous weavers living on the mountainside above Arba Minich and the two lakes. Dorze village has a local cultural tour, run by two brothers who have organized the village into weaving cooperatives. They first showed us their grandfather’s house, which was tall and spacious, designed, they say, like the elephants that used to roam the hills. We entered the dark house and when our eyes got used to darkness, the brother explained Dorze culture, showing us the gourds and butter packet, the place for a cow inside the house, the sleeping loft. 

 

Dorze"elephant" house at cultural center.

Dorze woman kneading ensete flour.

Outside in the garden, women demonstrated how they make and eat ensete, the ‘false banana” that sustains so many people in southern Ethiopia. They peel the broad leaf and stem (about three feet long) scrape the carbohydrate off the fiber, let it ferment for a month, and then make it into flatbread, pancakes. We then joined them in the big courtyard where they have bungalows for tourists – we were the only ones there during “off-season” -- and they served us their local liquor. It was like vodka with a garlic taste, make of sorghum and hops. Walelign liked it so much, he bought a bottle for his dad who, although 85 years old, likes to knock back a swig now and then. Marty and Elliot bought some of the beautiful woven cloths to bring back home.

Dorze cloths

An Ari woman under the rainbow as we return home.

We came back greeted by a double rainbow over Hawassa that announced a lovely storm that had brought the rains so sorely missed. The grass is turning green – it had browned again after an earlier small rain had not ushered in more – and the animals are eagerly going after it. We expect plowing and planting soon in the fields next to our guest house. Life is renewed with the intensity that one can only feel in a rural, agricultural land. As if in celebration, last night the hyenas, whom we hadn’t heard from in awhile, awakened us with their wild chortlings underneath our bedroom window.

And FLASH: THIS JUST IN! The breakthrough that Marty and her colleagues have been waiting for! Marty returned to work yesterday to find a terribly sick 16-year-old on the ward, comatose and with a fever and stiff neck from meningitis. The child had been admitted the day before and the procedure Marty had worked hard to establish – send the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) to the lab for bacterial culture – was implemented by the interns. And, low and behold, the culture produced results: The child has meningocccal meningitis. Marty knows her colleagues are saying “That's good news?! One of the most horrible, deadly diseases known to affect humans?” OK, you're right. It's bad news. But the further good news is that today she woke up and was eating a banana when Marty and students walked into the room. But the further bad news is that the staff suspects we may be facing a mini-epidemic of the disease, since the only other time we were able to test CSF successfully, with Gram stain, it showed the same. Soooo.... there may be a cloud inside of the silver lining inside of the original cloud. Life moves on. More next blog.

As always, we love you and miss you and would love to hear from you.

Marty and Ell

Mandatory beautiful cattle photo