Down Country, Part One.

I have been dithering for a couple of weeks, trying to figure out how to write about monitoring and evaluation in a not-too-boring way, in order to lay a foundation for our much-more-interesting first trip “down country”, to the FH/E project site at Cheha. But honestly, it’s not like I could have connected all of these dots for myself at the time so maybe it’s a better idea for me just to write about the trip and let the M&E thing explain itself in the process.

So: we found out, to our delight, that we were going to visit the Cheha project along with our coworker, Joy, and a consultant, Walter, who came from Kenya to help train FH/E staff on monitoring and evaluation, specifically how to create and conduct a baseline survey. I remember only a few details about Walter – he had a strong Kenyan accent and a verbal tic where he would add the phrase “isn’t it?” to the end of almost every statement. And like my memories of Walter, twenty years later, most of my memories of this trip are vague impressions.

The first order of business was to learn the correct expat jargon to describe the trip. In those days there were only six main roads in Ethiopia: two went north of Addis Abeba, two went south, and one each went east and west. So if you were traveling north – to the highlands – you were going “up country” and if you were going south you were going “down country.” (I never went far enough in the other directions to find out what that was called, except maybe “crazy”). We were heading three hours south on the Jimma Road which was still only about halfway to the town of Jimma. Our destination, Cheha, doesn’t appear on maps but it was in Gurage country, past the village of Welkite (Well-kee-tay), just across the Omo River.

Our guide for the trip was Salfiso Kitabo, the Cheha Project Manager. Salfiso was a good-natured and likeable man, probably in his early thirties at the time we knew him. He was also a very good driver so we were able to gape and marvel at the experience without any fears for our own safety – and, by the way, we were well set up in one of the big fancy Toyota Land Cruisers, traveling in style, a step up from Salfiso’s usual ride.

We had observed, in our city driving, that size matters where motor vehicles are concerned – that is to say, larger vehicles always have more respect and the right of way over smaller vehicles, no matter what the traffic laws might indicate. Out on the highway, the same rule applied – except that big fancy Toyota was one of the smaller vehicles out there. The highway was populated with overloaded buses, lopsided long-haul trucks, and beaten-up pickups that had seen better days. The road itself was a two-lane swath of crumbling tarmac with unreliable edges and enormous potholes. No matter which direction they were heading, most vehicles tried to stay in the center of the road where the surface was more consistent, moving only at the last possible moment to accommodate oncoming traffic. Even more terrifying was the prospect of passing a slow-moving bus or truck since you couldn’t always tell how much room you had on the other side. I never once drove on the highway so I don’t know for sure, but J tells me that we probably averaged 35-40 miles per hour on the road on trips like this.

I have been looking fruitlessly through our photographs – and I know for a fact that I don’t have all of our pictures from this trip – for an image of one of those city-to-city passengers buses, which were the means most people used to travel outside of Addis. They’re hard to explain but I have to try. Imagine a well-used flat front school bus, covered with dirt and rust and mismatched paint. There’s a roof rack piled high with bundles and blue plastic jerry cans, ringed with a fringe of live chickens that are tied to the rack by their feet, hanging upside down over the shoulders of the roof. When approached from the rear, you can see not only the back end of the vehicle but the entirety of one side as well, because the alignment is so off-kilter that the bus is driving diagonally down the road. When it hits a bump the entire assemblage – passengers, freight, and chickens – shifts alarmingly, like a Weeble that hasn’t quite made up its mind.

There was a lot to look at during our first trip out on the highway. In addition to all of the other vehicles, there were herds of tough African cattle alongside – and often across – the road. Groups of donkeys trundled under loads of hay, wood, or charcoal to be sold in the nearby market town. We had to slow down through the ramshackle villages, watching out for children and loose dogs and garis – haphazard, two-wheeled, donkey-drawn conveyances that served as taxis in towns with few automobiles, and inevitably drove down the main road at donkey speed. Our route took us through several small towns – Tefki and Tulu Bolo and Waliso – and you knew how tiny Cheha was going to be, even smaller than any of these places that were at least large enough to make it onto the map.