Concern
Back in Kombolche at the Concern offices, we wait a short while for our man to finish a meeting. The wait provides an opportunity to look around the compound. It is fully self contained with service bays for the small fleet of vehicles used by the operation. These range from four wheel drive Land Cruisers (anything less is ineffective in this terrain – there is only one main road north and one going east. Neither are sealed. Apart from these two, there are tracks like the one we went up to Girar Amba. Cars simply wouldn’t make it. Concern also has a couple of larger trucks, one of which I photographed a few days ago because its ‘no firearms’ sign caught my interest.
I have heard some aid organizations criticized for having large expensive offices in smart city centre premises. I have no idea if Concern does this is its home country (Ireland) but certainly not here. The offices are a collection of portakabins, small but perfectly adequate, lined up next to some small basic single story buildings that house the itinerant employees and volunteers.
We meet two of them for the second time and end up in the guest house for tea and biccies. Orla, a lovely friendly Irish woman married to an Ethiopian doctor is a nutritionist travelling to rural areas to treat malnutrition, particularly in children. The program she tells us about involves a new peanut based food product that is easy to produce within the continent, has high nutritional value and is widely used as part of a reasonably recently established food and basic healthcare package.
She has just been up in the extreme highlands where poverty and its associated problems are endemic. The children are tiny, partly because of the effects of altitude and partly to malnutrition. She tells us its freezing up there, and that the program she runs has significant but limited success because women won’t travel the distance they have to to reach the program headquarters on as frequent a basis as is recommended. Fortnightly is recommended, monthly is what they will do.
People from countries that are smaller or better served by transport might find it hard to imagine the distances involved. Seeing people walking everywhere as I have on this trip I begin to get the sense of this. Kids walking to and from school, people carrying water containers and various goods in directions where the nearest village is twenty minutes away by car hint at the reality of this.
I recall the first day we arrived and took two old men from the bridge where we stopped and took old Cunningham family friends met with by chance into Degan. A distance of about 10kms which presumably they would otherwise have walked. I have not seen many minibuses or any buses at all on the route between Kombolche and Degan, so if there are any, they must run infrequently. This travel is on main roads. Getting up to Girar Amba, which is still a relatively well established route is a harder story, and going beyond that to the highland terrain Orla has just described must be on a level with some of the serious tramping that some hardy people choose to do for pleasure where I live.
It strikes me while searching the collection for pictures of men of the age we picked up that my photographs reflect the age demographic for a country where the average life expectancy is well below 60 and the percent of the population over this age is tiny. There are clearly some who defy and raise the average, wiry old men who may be much younger than they look.
The advice that our man is now free to see us leads to what turns out to be a small set back. After agreeing to be the mediator and our decision to change the terms of the MoU to include this consideration, Ato Endalamaw advises us that he can’t sign the MoU, that we will have to see the Head of Concern for Ethiopia when we return to Addis to ask him to endorse it. As well as a matter of protocol, he recommends we seek advice on transfer of funds and legal and administrative matters regarding purchase, donation and duty free import of the vehicle. Although there is a little disappointment at finding another hurdle to cross, it makes perfect sense and we are assured of an appointment with the CEO in the capital. The meeting is valuable and informative as it happens, and we leave Concern in no doubt at all that it will work out.
On our last trip back through Kombolche, I stick the video camera out the window to capture the dirt road, the container like shops, people walking, the bridge over the river that doubles as the local car wash and all related sounds. Its all fairly well imprinted in my memory but telling the story to others will be easier without the need for recourse to words.
I have heard some aid organizations criticized for having large expensive offices in smart city centre premises. I have no idea if Concern does this is its home country (Ireland) but certainly not here. The offices are a collection of portakabins, small but perfectly adequate, lined up next to some small basic single story buildings that house the itinerant employees and volunteers.
We meet two of them for the second time and end up in the guest house for tea and biccies. Orla, a lovely friendly Irish woman married to an Ethiopian doctor is a nutritionist travelling to rural areas to treat malnutrition, particularly in children. The program she tells us about involves a new peanut based food product that is easy to produce within the continent, has high nutritional value and is widely used as part of a reasonably recently established food and basic healthcare package.
She has just been up in the extreme highlands where poverty and its associated problems are endemic. The children are tiny, partly because of the effects of altitude and partly to malnutrition. She tells us its freezing up there, and that the program she runs has significant but limited success because women won’t travel the distance they have to to reach the program headquarters on as frequent a basis as is recommended. Fortnightly is recommended, monthly is what they will do.
People from countries that are smaller or better served by transport might find it hard to imagine the distances involved. Seeing people walking everywhere as I have on this trip I begin to get the sense of this. Kids walking to and from school, people carrying water containers and various goods in directions where the nearest village is twenty minutes away by car hint at the reality of this.
I recall the first day we arrived and took two old men from the bridge where we stopped and took old Cunningham family friends met with by chance into Degan. A distance of about 10kms which presumably they would otherwise have walked. I have not seen many minibuses or any buses at all on the route between Kombolche and Degan, so if there are any, they must run infrequently. This travel is on main roads. Getting up to Girar Amba, which is still a relatively well established route is a harder story, and going beyond that to the highland terrain Orla has just described must be on a level with some of the serious tramping that some hardy people choose to do for pleasure where I live.
It strikes me while searching the collection for pictures of men of the age we picked up that my photographs reflect the age demographic for a country where the average life expectancy is well below 60 and the percent of the population over this age is tiny. There are clearly some who defy and raise the average, wiry old men who may be much younger than they look.
The advice that our man is now free to see us leads to what turns out to be a small set back. After agreeing to be the mediator and our decision to change the terms of the MoU to include this consideration, Ato Endalamaw advises us that he can’t sign the MoU, that we will have to see the Head of Concern for Ethiopia when we return to Addis to ask him to endorse it. As well as a matter of protocol, he recommends we seek advice on transfer of funds and legal and administrative matters regarding purchase, donation and duty free import of the vehicle. Although there is a little disappointment at finding another hurdle to cross, it makes perfect sense and we are assured of an appointment with the CEO in the capital. The meeting is valuable and informative as it happens, and we leave Concern in no doubt at all that it will work out.
On our last trip back through Kombolche, I stick the video camera out the window to capture the dirt road, the container like shops, people walking, the bridge over the river that doubles as the local car wash and all related sounds. Its all fairly well imprinted in my memory but telling the story to others will be easier without the need for recourse to words.
posted by Cathy Gunn at
November 22, 2007
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