Background Information.

Anyone who knows anything about Ethiopia knows that there was a serious famine in the country – “The Ethiopian Famine” – for a couple of years, roughly 1983-85. Those of us who are old enough may recall the heartbreaking images of starving women and children; perhaps we remember Live Aid and Band Aid and “We Are the World”. Western countries sent bajillions of dollars in aid – cash and commodities – to mitigate the crisis. In the end, despite the humanitarian response, it’s estimated that about eight million people were affected and one million people died as a result of the famine.

Along with the aid money, The Ethiopian Famine brought hundreds of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to Ethiopia to help deliver food and medical assistance to people in need. Food for the Hungry was one of the many organizations that came into Ethiopia to provide short-term humanitarian relief, and subsequently expanded their programs to include longer-term development work. By the time we arrived, ten years later, FH/E was operating at three locations (I am sure there were three, but I can only remember two of them – Cheha in the south, and Gondar in the north), providing a wide array of services including food-for-work, child sponsorship, health care and health education, agricultural assistance, reforestation, water access, and veterinary medicine to the communities where they worked.

I have to acknowledge that I do not know exactly where FH/E obtained all of the funding for its work. Some – a lot – came from USAID and other western governments as part of their foreign aid packages; some came from churches and individuals who sponsored children or supported specific programs. Some of it must have come from the international fundraising efforts of Food for the Hungry International.

At the time of The Ethiopian Famine, and for many years after, the need was so urgent and obvious that there wasn’t a lot of accountability for where and how aid money was spent – cash and commodities were sent to Ethiopia, feeding centers ministered to people in crisis, lots of people lived and some people died. Donors were just pleased to know that their funds were making a difference. There was minimal oversight from the Ethiopian government in the form of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC), which directed the work of NGOs operating in the country. But nobody asked how much of every dollar was spent on overhead; nobody questioned the cost to purchase and transport food and supplies. With a population in turmoil, nobody could follow up to find out how malnutrition might influence the long-term health of individuals affected by the famine, even if they had wanted to.

But by 1995, the situation had changed. Other humanitarian crises had diverted Western attention, and a lot of aid money, away from Ethiopia. Individuals were developing “donor fatigue”, reluctant to give to the same cause over and over again with little indication of positive movement. Worst of all, it had become clear that a small number of charlatans were taking advantage of the crisis, lining their own pockets with contributions while their brothers and sisters suffered.

As a result, FH/E and other NGOs became responsible not only for developing and implementing programs, but also for demonstrating the effectiveness of these programs – to the Ethiopian government as well as to international and individual contributors. That’s the reason FH/E created the position of Research Officer, and that’s the reason they implemented an organization-wide training on monitoring and evaluation, shortly after we arrived in Ethiopia. More about that next week.

Minamin (This and That).

I have spent the past two weeks writing about the Ethiopian famine of 1983-85, and how it set the stage for our experience as development workers -- but I couldn't bear to post it today, after an extended absence. Instead, I bring you a few more photos from the interior of our apartment, along with some random memories.

Here's J, standing in the kitchen. He appears to be posing with a potholder on his head; this is certainly not the oddest thing he did while in Ethiopia. I would guess I took this photo while seated at the dining table. You can see our cooker behind him -- the burners on the top were electric but the oven used liquid propane gas, and the little door on the right was where you stashed the gas cylinder. It was just like the cylinder one would use for a gas grill, unwieldy and expensive, and we learned to check our supply early and often since there's nothing worse than running out of gas while you're trying to make dinner.

The kitchen sink and our scary cabinets are hidden behind the refrigerator. Bonus points if you can identify anyone in the pictures on the side of the fridge.

Down on the floor there you can see (or trip over) our soda supply. Soda was only sold in volume, two dozen bottles at a time. The first time we purchased a case, we paid for the glass bottles as well as for the soda inside them, which gave us incentive to return all of the empties for recycling -- in Ethiopia, that means you wash them out and refill them. If we ever broke a bottle we had to pay for a replacement to complete our case. Some of the bottles were well used and battered, so it was kind of a treat to get one that was obviously shiny new. When we filled our case we could choose between Pepsi products or Coke products (we were a Coke family), but never a mixture of the two. In addition to their signature cola drinks, each brand made a lemon-lime soda and an orange flavored soda. So it was Pepsi/7-Up/Mirinda or Coca/Sprite/Fanta. There were no diet options.

We drank a lot of soda, but we also developed a taste for Ambo water, a fizzy mineral water from a spring in the highlands northwest of Addis Abeba. Ambo water has a fairly strong mineral flavor that takes some getting used to, but these days one can purchase Ambo "Lite" with a lower mineral content and less carbonation. It's now available in plastic bottles, though the label hasn't changed in twenty years.

Our friends Chip and Cathy sent us this Little Red Riding Hood hand puppet and other thoughtful gifts for our birthdays in June and July of 1995. (If I recall correctly, one of the pictures on the fridge is of their newborn son Nate, who just turned 20). My sister made and sent the crocheted doily on the back of the chair. It was always a hassle to get packages out of customs at the post office -- a subject that will get at least one post of its own -- but we are eternally thankful for the love and generosity of our friends.

The striped wall hanging was made locally; we might have purchased it at the craft market but I am fairly sure it came from Hope Enterprises, an organization that taught people to weave as part of their vocational training program. Hope also operated a cafe near our apartment where we could get waffles with whipped cream on a Saturday morning, and they had a shop where we could buy flowering plants as well as textiles of all kinds. We have red Hope place mats on our dining table at this very moment; if we gave you the gift of a doll or a scarf or a tablecloth it was almost certainly from Hope as well.

This picture was taken a few months later, after we had moved the furniture around a little. You can see the raveling seam on the left hand cushion of our custom-made sofa; we kept turning that cushion to hide the damage but eventually all of the seams were equally frayed. J is reading (well, marking his place in) an Isaac Asimov novel sent by our friends Fred and Kathy, who decided to use our time in Ethiopia to brainwash us into becoming science fiction fans. They sent us two paperback novels every month and we devoured every single one of them. It was fairly difficult to find English-language fiction in Ethiopia and anyone who knows me knows how much I love to read, so this was a lifesaver. I probably read each of those books at least twice before passing them along; I am sure they are still in circulation, delighting sci-fi fans, twenty years later.

About the House.

After writing about the apartment a few weeks ago I pestered J to sit down with his home design software and put together a floor plan, to refresh our dimming memories as much as to share on the blog. Here it is:

The front entrance is there at the lower left corner, next to the bathroom, with the living area and balcony at the top and the bedroom on the upper right. It’s far from perfect but it’s a good representation of the space; it's probably drawn a little larger than the apartment actually was. As I said, it was more than enough space for the two of us and the few items we brought with us, though we definitely acquired “stuff” to make it more comfortable.