Turning a Valley of Death Into an Oasis of Life
This week we launched our new campaign to highlight the amazing progress that has been made since the Ethipian famine, but to also show that there are still children in the world living in fear of hunger. Grow Hope will not only raise awareness of the fabulous work you help us to do, but also to give real hope to the children of Zambia.
In today's blog, Nick Weston shares his experience of visiting the revived Antsokia valley on a visit to Ethiopia with us last year.
By Nick Weston, HunterGatherCook.com
I used to hate Mondays. Mondays are my new ‘Saturdays’ — how ironic. Since starting Hunter Gather Cook three years ago, weekends equal courses, the true days of work.
There’s a whole new work schedule: the first few days of the week mean research & development, acquisition of raw materials (shooting, fishing & foraging), lab time (brewing, infusing, pickling & preserving) and down time or, let's be honest, all of the above. Oh yes, and admin. But then there’s always admin…
It was one such Monday that said admin was about to be conquered. Brewing up a strong batch of the black stuff, I flipped open the office and let the mail stream in. Amongst the inevitable spam was one that almost slipped through. The email was addressed ‘Hi Nick’ as opposed to just ‘Hi’ (a sure sign of spammage), so I read on.
‘I've got an idea for you. How would you feel about coming on a trip to Ethiopia with us?’
It’s not every day you receive such an invitation, so I replied.
Touching down
Three months later my feet landed firmly on the tarmac at Addis Ababa Bole International and the smell of humidity filled my nostrils.
Ethiopia has been through some rough times. Many of you may remember the devastating famine that occurred between 1983-85, which caused close to 400,000 deaths.
I had been invited out by World Vision to see what they had helped accomplish over the last thirty years. World Vision was at the head of the large-scale aid relief during the famine and have since worked with communities throughout the country setting up Area Development Programmes (ADPs), formed of the following three phases:
- Relief (1984-85) Aid and food drops; over 4 million people were affected by the famine.
- Rehabilitation (1986-89) Infrastructure and agriculture — seeds, nursery sites, healthcare, irrigation and water distribution points.
- Development: Livability.
Before I go any further, tales of survival come in all shapes and forms, many of us are unlikely to ever find ourselves up a certain creek without a certain instrument. However, what I was about to see first hand was true survival.
This wasn’t about fire by friction, trapping or what wild plants you could eat if you had to survive. This was the real deal on a large scale. Granted the people of Antsokia and indeed other parts of Ethiopia have had the support of such aid agencies as World Vision, but rather than creating a system of dependence, the support they have received has been all about nurturing their environment — give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, give a man a rod…
From surviving to thriving
I was keen to explore just how this resilient collection of individuals had not only survived the famine but thrived, turning a landscape that Mother Nature had all but deserted into a fertile, productive oasis of life. What was quite astounding about their achievements was the level of sustainability that had been concreted into their way of life.
Once out of the busy capital and heading north, the true spirit of Ethiopia revealed herself: thatched huts, more like iron age roundhouses than anything, hay stacks, cow pats stacked to be baked into fuel by the sun, and livestock. Lots of livestock.
As we travelled to the Antsokia Valley (one of the worst-hit areas of the famine), the passing homesteads seemed like a vision of rustic bliss: a day with the Larkin Family.
Out here ‘beasts of burden’ do exactly what it says on the tin, donkeys and camels mostly, but the cows also get a look in, often with a plough as part of the arrangement. My first thoughts were that this is how the UK was at one point: a subsistence culture working to live.
It can’t be an easy life, that I can vaguely understand. Six months in a treehouse and three months on a desert island with minimal rations can give you an insight, but not to this extent.
Our first stop in the Antsokia Valley was to visit a typical Ethiopian smallholding. People with my complexion are not all that common in Ethiopia and more often than not, wherever we went, we were greeted with ‘Ferengi! Ferengi!’ (the Amharic phrase for Westeners in general) from children and adults alike.
As we walked away from the road and through the dense undergrowth we emerged into a scene of bucolic bliss. Seada Kamal (36) and her 3 children came out of her house to greet us and show her around her small plot of land that was a lush orchard of mangoes, oranges, limes and papaya complete with a large herb garden and well.
Seada and her husband had been donated seedlings as part of the ADP’s agro-forestry and garden scheme. They had also had help digging a thirty foot well (by hand) which had enabled them to sustain their smallholding. The house itself was a simple timber structure with a tin roof and high ceilings to keep it cool. I could’ve quite happily moved in.
Our next stop was to visit a dairy in the small township of Mekoy. Turning up with my Western expectations, I naively assumed a serious head of cattle. On asking how many cattle the owner had with my poor grasp of Amharic, I thought she said 300: actually, it was 3. Turns out that’s quite a lot! Not only did this woman provide most of the milk, butter and yoghurt for the township she also had an excellent bit of work on the side: I had also stumbled upon the local brewery.
I had wondered why there were quite so many local fellas in her backyard; this place was not only the brewery, but evidently a bar. The two major local tipples were ‘Tej’ a punchy honey wine and ‘Tella’ a homebrew made from various grains. Both are infused/flavoured with ‘Gesho’, a member of the buckthorn family, as a substitution for hops.
I’m quite familiar with home brewing, but this was interesting stuff: much to the excitement of the landlady and eager onlookers, she poured me a glass when I asked for a snifter.
I supped. Earthy, a hint of roasted something mixed with plenty of twig & leaf. It was strong stuff, not quite the nettle beer I was accustomed to. After picking the bits out my teeth, the glass was snatched from my hand and finished off in a few gulps by my hostess. Her actions spoke louder than words – this ferengi couldn’t take his ale.
The rest of our time in the north was spent visiting similar success stories, small farmsteads that supplied the local population, not only generating their own income, but also a cycle of self-sufficiency without the need for outside intervention.
A succession of droughts had been the major cause of the famine, along with soil degradation. Through ADPs and early warning systems, 93% of households are prepared for any instance of famine.
Ethiopian determination
One of the things I found most strange about Ethiopia was the lack of hunting and gathering that went on. Fishing aside, wild foods don’t really exist and hunting is, as far as I could tell, illegal.
What was most prolific throughout the journey was that Ethiopia is a country that is carefully managed by the people just as much as the government, with the help of outside organisations such as World Vision, they have been dealt a fresh start, born out of all the mistakes we in the western world have made and, in most cases, still are.
The people of Ethiopia are what make it tick. Many of the folk that I met were extremely positive and knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives or cottage industries, they also had plans to expand them. Through their determination to survive and thrive they have created an existence that we in the developed world need to take note of.
Through the ages as humans have tried to control the environment and surrounding landscape, we have quickly learnt what it is to lose control. Mother Nature cannot be tamed and humans, just like any other life form that exists on this incredible planet we call home, need to understand that in order to survive we have to work with nature as opposed to trying to control it.
If you want to learn more about Grow Hope and how you can help bring hope to the children of Zambia, you can find out more about the campaign on our Grow Hope pages, including details of the gardens we'll be showing at Chelsea, Gardeners' World Live and Hampton Court Palace over the summer.