Traveling through Ethiopia- 2

Robert and I, with Emmy and Joost and my favourite driver Gètinèt, went to Bahir Dar, the city at the southern end of Lake Tana, near the source of the Blue Nile and near the famous Blue Nile falls. January 4 it was. 

It is a two days trip to get there, mostly  because one has to cross the steep gorge of the Blue Nile  valley. It took us an hour to wind down the hairpin road to the bridge down in the valley and another ¾ of an hour to get up at the other end. 

Before and after that we were crossing miles and miles, hectares and hectares of rich agricultural plateaus, where Teff, the famous gluten free local rain,  was being harvested. People were cutting the Teff by hand an oxen were trampling/ threshing  the Teff. Beautiful sights.

Impressive also were all the people- hundreds - walking along the road, on their way to the weekly market. We drove into a funeral, quite a beautiful occasion actually, very respectful.

Once we arrived in the beautifully situated, but a bit run down Ghion hotel, we couldn’t help bird spotting, as there were so many interesting birds present. Even Emmy – who had no clue about birds before she came here - really got into the fun of bird spotting.  

Next morning, while having breakfastfst, a fish eagle was having breakfast as well, on a ig fish, in a branch overhanging our table. Never seen one so nearby!  

Bahir Dar itself is a bog and prosperous city, full of Bajaj's 

Travelling through Ethiopia -1

We had a great time with Joost and Emmy visiting us from December 27th till January 11th. Since Hanna (our Ethiopian ‘daughter’, now living in Maastricht) and Jaco are also here for the biannual visit to her mother Beletech, it is extra special to be together.  
Robert and I noticed that we have been showing ‘our country’ to Emmy and Joost . We have grown really fond of Ethiopia over the years, since we started working & living here in 1989 and are now back here again.

 The first day after Joost and Emmy’s arrival was for acclimatising. Of course we were invited at Beletech’house for Indjera and the famous Doro Watt, with Gomen (a dark green cabbage), a yellow lentil sauce  and fresh salty tomatoes.  Beletech still cannot believe that ‘her’ little boy Joost has become a man now.

We took Emmy and Joost to some must-visit places, like the museum (with Lucy, the famous oldest ever human skeleton), the Ghion hotel, where Hanna used  to take Joost for a daily strawl, Piassa, the Italian style old part of town, and the nursery at Selam, to buy some more plants for our garden. 
From seeing the old earthenware pot (photo to the right): who were here first? The Templars?  or the Jewish population influencing the Templars when they came here in the 11th century? 

Both Emmy and Joost were astonished by the shapes that life in Africa take: high piled mattresses on a pickup, or even carried by one man; the incredible traffic where  sheep, donkeys,  road-cleaning women, beggars, taxi busses and cars and trucks all try to make their way; the small shops that have their products  outside on the pavement; the sheep for sale sitting patiently in the hot sun on the sidewalk; the colourful dresses and, as Emmy remarked, everyone is smiling and looking relatively happy.

The first outing was to Langano, in the rift valley, where we rent a (shared) cottage. We celebrated new year’s eve with appelbeignets and sharing our dreams for the new year. We lighted a Chinese lantern which took our wishes up into the very dark air, to the stars. On the morning of January first we had our dive into the – not so cold- see. 

The swallows are sitting here, waiting to go back to the Netherlands in April.  

 These flowers were our own 'fireworks' 











And this is the view from the cottage. 

Christmas 2013 in Addis Abeba

It didn’t look like Christmas at all, today, December 25th! 

Apart from the flowers in our garden, that is. 

 Robert went to work and I had the carpenter to instruct about where to bore holes to hang Rob’s pots with Geraniums, make tea for them (The carpenter and his assistant are making a small chest and and make the curtains for the dining room.  

But first of all I had to store the kilos of Ethiopian Kái Wott (the base for a lovely sauce) that Beletech made for  me. She made a whole bucket of it and it didn’t fit in the freezer compartment.  The wott consists of 10 kilo’s onions (mashed), 4 kilos of tomatoes (mashed) and this toghether cooks for a whole day until ¼ of its volume. Then you add Berbere, a dry spice made from lots of hot red pepper, dried, garlic, ginger, an Ethiopian spice that I don’t know, both the black and white variety. Beletech took me yesterday to the ‘mill’ where they ground the mixture into the red powder called Berbere. It was an adventure in itself, waiting in the line of women, each bringing a bIg sack (or two) with their particular homemade mixture.  

Any way, when I completed the curtains around 15:00 I went to the GYM around the corner to rehabilitate my body (I am growing ‘vadsig’ – a good Dutch word for being not fit and a bit overweight in the wrong places). I am so happy to have a Gym around the corner! 

Now I am listening to beautiful Christmas music  (Cantique de Noel, sung by Jose Carreras) and  it – finally -  gives me the Christmas feeling.  Rob and I had a simple Christmas dinner:  leftover spaghetti with a sauce of stewed beef, cabbage and berbere.  With new curtains, made of traditional handwoven cotton, that turned out quite all right.

Then we recalled all the Christmases we celebrated during the past 35 years, where and with whom, in Nigeria and  England (with Lindsay and Jeremy) in Hawaii with ‘the extended family’, in Canada, with Bart and Megan and Megans family, in Burkina Faso with Marjan and Frank, in Liberia with Roberts' parents and mine! In Jordan with Rob’s mum and her friend Sanne, In the Netherlands in Son with my family and in Renkum with Meike’s Hawaiian friends. Good memories, all of them!  We also thought of you, our friends and family now celebrating Christmas somewhere in the world. May light shine upon you.

And suddenly this evening there was internet connection again. So I managed to talk to Bart, Roberts’ brother in Canada. Even though it was short, it was good to be in touch. Megan’s mum died last week, and somehow  we are more connected than usual.

…Man will live for everymore… because of Christmas day… 

Goodbye and good luck Veronika

Today, Saturday night December 21^st, Veronika left, after having stayed  4 months with us. Veronika is a very interesting young Tsjech lady, doing her masters in Wageningen. She was here for her internship and lived with a farmers family in the countryside of Haile Mariam for several weeks, to learn out about collaboration and also how farmers associations  work. In the picture she is sitting between her 'hostfather' and her good friend Mamis, the translator, in the back of our car on the way home for a reunion. 

At the same time she got involved with artists associations in Addis Abeba, by which she got some very good friends, who also visited her in our house, so we also got acquainted with them. She has become a very dear friend, almost like an extra daughter, especially since  there are some similaraties between Veronika and our daughter Meike.

This  last day Veronica took me to several interesting shops to help her decide about presents to take home. We went to this shoemakers’shop. Amazing! The guy started 2 years ago and now has a well running business. All leather shoes, custom made, by hand. He copies fashionable models and makes them your size and colour, and – for European standards – very cheap. Of course I ordered a pair.

This Saturday afternoon, when Veronika was packing, she invited us to come to the front door to meet someone. This someone appeared to be her gift to us:  he looks like a shaman, but according to Veronika he is an angel, protecting our house, see picture. One of her artists friends made it from recycling materials. We are very happy with him and are already missing Veronica.  

Roberts project LAUNCHING WORKSHOP

On December 17^th Robert had organised the project’s launching workshop, in the Harmony Hotel (what’s in a name?). 

I was also invited and that was a great pleasure! The Canadian Ambassador was there (being the biggerst donor), the Ethiopian minister of Agriculture, since the project is part of a country wide programme for Sustainable Land Management, and the director of KfW, the German Development Fund that also contributes and steers the project on behalf of Canada. Most of all I liked to meet with the project coordinators in the three different areas, Bahir Dar and  Mekelle north of Addis and Oromya, just south of Addis. They all speak  very good English and got their masters degree abroad, so it was a pleasure to talk and exchange ideas. Not only about sustainable agriculture, but also about politics, life in Ethiopia, their children etc. 

The workshop (about Sustainable Land Management, SLM) was very interesting and very succesful indeed and Robert got quite a few compliments for the organisation of it all. 

Sinterklaas in Addis Abeba 9december 2013

On december 8th our Dutch Sinterklaas party was celebrated at the Dutch Embassy. Sinterklaas arrives usually two weeks before his birthday, December 5^th,  in the Netherlands and on the evening of the 5^th he and his black Peters distribute presents, through the chimney, to children that have been good this year. In many families it is a custom that you give each other presents, but more important than the present is the poem that accompanies the present, saying something about the characteristics of the receiving person, or about silly mistakes he or she made.  Instead of a poem you can make a characteristic disguise for the present, imagining something the person would like to have but cannot get. I once got a clock from Sinterklaas (my dad made it) with 20 hours in it instead of 12, because I always had so much to do, that I was always running short of time. 

Anyway, we went to the Embassy, also because we had been celebrating Sinterklaas here 24 years ago, in the same compound, with at most 16 Dutch and half-Dutch children, amongst which our own. I can’t describe you how different it was this time. 

At the entrance there was no way one could avoid the colourful beer-bar, there were a hundred Belgian and Dutch children and their parents and there was a lot of noise:  Sinterklaas songs were broadcasted, a bit too loudly for our ears ( but maybe we get old!). 

The children were asked to get ready for Sinterklaas, but they were only interested in the sweets: pepernoten. Robert and I looked behind the scene, where Sinterklaas was getting ready and that was fun!  There was the old embassy building, not any more in use now, and the garden we remembered, where I taught the 8 Dutch children Dutch on Saturdays.

We had the pleasure to meet the now grown-up children of our friends: Gertjan Becx ( his parnets worked here at the ALERT lerosy hospital 24 years ago)  and Harm Haverkort, son of my intervision group friend Bertus. This next generation is continuing the good work!  Time to talk with the Agricultural attaché  was pleasant and useful too.  All together a very pleasant afternoon. 

Fieldtrip!

From Tuesday3 till Thursday 5th December I  was  invited to join the Meta Meta team on their field trip to the South, direction of Awassa.  3 guys, two of them Spanish, one Dutch. We stayed in a hotel in Arsinegelle, a nice provincial town, relaxed, compared to Addis Ababa. 

The hotel was clean, good bed, cold and warm running water (which we haven’t got at home yet) and it cost 170 birr per night, which is the equivalent of 7 euros. Amazing! 

As I concluded earlier: there are two financial circuits here, one for the rich and one for the poor, the majority.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the trip:  Diego driving  us – in an old non air-conditioned, dust catching Lada that didn’t get faster than 80 km an hour - through the beautiful countryside. There were rich areas, rich from an agricultural point of view, with many stacks of recently  harvested teff, the main food crop here. 

In one area  they grow wheat in an almost English looking country side with scattered big trees.  There were a few combine harvesters at work. Quite a contradiction with the dry and less fertile Acacia landscape near lake Langano.

My reason to come along was to learn more about the sustainable agriculture projects that are going on here. The project Ruben Borge is working on, soil improvement with a mixture of rock dust and organic compost instead of the very expensive chemical fertilizer  NPK, will be in the English version of my book THE WHOLE WORLD, on which I am working presently. 

We visited an Ethiopian model farmer who had an integrated farm with everything in it: a fish pond fed by the chicken dung of the chicken pen hanging over the water, an irrigated vegetable and fruit garden, a biogas installation which provided his family with compost and light and gas for cooking; saving wood! Next to that he grew wheat and barley. His son spoke English quite well, impressive!

We also visited Dutch flower exporting farmers. Actually, you can hardly speak of farmers, they are businessmen with hectares of greenhouses. To my surprise they were more sustainable, both socially and environmentally, than I had expected. Their problem was how to compost  their green waste, of at least 3 truckloads per day.

the photo to the left is of an Indian herb farm; red basil. he exports to various european countries, also fresh mint.

I will continue later, have to go now.