Loko Dadacha walks up to six hours, round trip, during times of drought to fetch water for her family. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America
Our water bill came the other day. It was about 100 bucks—a spike from the month before and it left us scratching our heads. Where did all that water go? We hardly know because here, with water, it’s easy come, easy go. Turn on the tap and it gushes—hot, cold, or just right. It couldn’t require less effort. Read the rest of this entry »
Terraces around the village of Ashenge have been built to help conserve the soil. Photo by Marc Cohen/Oxfam America
Marc Cohen is Oxfam America’s senior researcher on humanitarian policy and climate change. Here’s his account of a recent visit to northern Ethiopia where famine struck a quarter century ago.
Twenty-five years ago, Michael Buerk’s dramatic BBC footage from Korem, in northern Ethiopia, brought a devastating famine to the world’s attention. Tens of thousands of people had sought refuge from war and drought in the town. Every 20 minutes, a camp resident died from hunger and related diseases. Buerk called Korem “the closest thing to hell on earth.”
Last year, I traveled to Korem while working on a research project about decentralization in Ethiopia and how that affects men and women farmers’ access to services. My colleagues and I arrived in the town just as the regional Orthodox Christian patriarch was inaugurating a large new church; hundreds of people had turned out for the colorful ceremony. This celebration was a big contrast with the grim images of 1984.
But it was a meeting with Merzeneb Firkado—her first name means “honey from heaven”—that made me realize how much has changed for people in the Korem area since that terrible period. Read the rest of this entry »
A woman gathers water from the Dawa River in southern Ethiopia. With drought sweeping the region, clean drinking water sources are becoming fewer and farther between. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America
Last night a colleague emailed me a copy of a really powerful speech by Rajenda K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 2007 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At the 45th Annual Nobel Conference in Minnesota earlier this week, Pachauri talked about water—a topic that struck me as particularly important right now, given the drought sweeping through East Africa and my own recent experiences visiting drought-affected communities in Ethiopia.
“At one level the world’s water is like the world’s wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others,” Pachauri said.
He also emphasized the link between climate change and water, and the fact that scarce resources can lead to conflicts in already-fragile areas.
“Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change,” Pachauri said. “There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet… We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don’t come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace.”
Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America
A man in the Netherlands is trying to cash in on what the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says could someday be a $10 billion market for goods produced from camel’s milk. According to the New York Times, Frank Smits has imported a small herd of the lanky, cranky creatures and is coaxing milk out of them at the rate of a gallon and a half a day per camel. And he’s selling it, hardened into cheese, for $60 a pound.
I’m not so sure about their milk (or the price of their cheese), but I have to admit, I’m kind of in love with camels—especially after a recent reporting trip to Ethiopia, where drought takes a swifter toll on lesser beasts. Camels can suffer, too, but not like cows. And increasingly, pastoralists in the southern part of the country are expanding their herds to include camels, prized for their endurance when the rain refuses to come. On this trip, it seemed like we were seeing them everywhere—saucer-footed and gangly—loping along the dusty tracks that snake through the region.
But as hardy as they may be in dry climates, camels need water just as much as the rest of us do. And there’s no sound quite as lusty as a crowd of them draining a trough. Here’s proof:
http://oxfamamericablogs.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/SANY0052_closeup_camels_drinking.MP4.FLV
Moh Mariko, born in the year when it rained a lot (1945). Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America
Moh Mariko was not sure what year she was born, since it isn’t important and no one pays attention to such things in her village in southern Mali. “I was born in the year when there was a lot of rain,” she says. (Her government ID said it was 1945.)
Rain, that’s the important thing in the Sahel. When there is none, people suffer terribly. They can’t grow crops to feed themselves, and they can’t grow cotton to sell for cash, so they can’t support their families with enough food, medicine, and clothes and books and school fees for their children.
Read the rest of this entry »
Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America
Like many of you, we’re all closely following the news about the situation in Sudan today. You may already know that the Sudanese government has revoked the operating license of Oxfam Great Britain. Together, aid groups have been providing life-saving assistance to some of the 2.7 million people displaced in the region.
Among those 2.7 million are the girls in the photo above, which was taken in April 2007 in Kebkabiya, North Sudan. Though the land is dry, the tens of thousands of people in and around Kebkabiya–many of whom have fled here for safety since the crisis erupted in Darfur–have access to clean water. Thanks to humanitarian efforts, Oxfam helped the town to build a water system–its first ever.
I just finished working on a video with our video producer Rob Baker here at Oxfam. It’s about a type of well used by the Borena in Ethiopia. As I was coming to work on the train this morning, whooshing past the grey, frozen salt marshes north of Boston, I was thinking back on the brief days I spent in southern Oromiya.
Outside the village of Olladida there is a huge pile of cow dung. My Ethiopian colleagues tell me that here in southern Ethiopia a big dung pile is a status symbol. In a place where no one will tell you flat out how many cows they own (any more than an American would tell a stranger how much money is in their checking account), the size of your dung pile speaks for itself. I have to wonder if my colleagues are yanking my chain.
I once owned a small house. This dung pile is a lot bigger.
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