Emily in Ethiopia

Emily Compares

29 Dec 2011 2 Comments

by dgovanni in Ethiopia Adventures Tags: Ethiopian Agricultural Practices, Living in Yayu Ethiopia

by Laura

Emily asked me to post this reflection on the different agricultural practices in the towns that she has lived in.  She explains that she was partially inspired by, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but only because I think what she is writing about is kind of laughable coming from a place where you are forced to eat what is around you and options are very slim. There is no refrigeration, little waste and you are lucky if your produce does not go bad between market days. Drying fruits and vegetables could help you out in hungry snack craving times or for soups if it’s pumpkin (I did that one last week and they look deceivingly like dried apples, boo!). I am also drying my own spices as many dried ones are not available at this market the way they were in Konso. It’s the coffee harvesting time, though, so I hope it will improve when that ends. It’s strange to be in a town where you feel the organic, fair trade label applies to the guy on your compound raking through the drying beans in his bare feet. Ha! They should put that on the packaging in Whole Foods. Then who will feel so warm and fuzzy as they drink their conscious coffee?”

One of Emily's Konso friends harvesting "moringa".

The Life of a Plant (by Emily)

Lately I have been contemplating the life of a plant. Not just the duration from seed to fruit to seed, but its original purpose for being grown, its journey, its resting place of consumption… When I lived in Konso, there were many plants that were exported out and maintained the livelihoods of farmers – about 95% of the general working population – to grow the following season. Sesame, flaxseed and sunflower seeds were all sent to other countries to be refined into the oil that was then resold in Ethiopia. The cheapest oil, that most everyone consumed in the area, was palm oil, thick gloopy stuff that was obviously not very good for your health. This is just a simple example of something that was used every day with no true local option.

Other foods available at the main town market made up for it – a plentiful amount of grains and corn, thick leafed cabbage, moringa (a tree with leaves eaten like cabbage, which is consumed nearly every day there), chile peppers, garlic, red onions, chives, fresh eggs in little tins carried through the imposing hills to get to a dusty selling spot…the list could go on and on.  Most things sold there were from farms in the area. Some, more luxury items, like ginger, turmeric and many of the other spices came from towns three hours away in opposite directions by vehicle, Jinka and Arba Minch. Tomatoes and carrots and some cabbage varieties, too. Tree nurseries through Greener Ethiopia/Trees for the Future were starting to produce these vegetables (amongst others) nearby but the seed sources were very limited, found in major cities and coming from two companies. Chemically treated seeds were the norm.

This is all being said coming from a person who most recently lived in Northern New Mexico but grew up surrounded by farmland growing a mixture of personally selected crops and government issued corn and soy seed. Northern New Mexico offered options – seeds passed on for generations, seed exchanges and a lot of small farmers producing food in healthy, environmentally aware ways. In many ways, farmers in Konso behave similarly. They use compost, ripping and mulching. They plow with oxen, pushing through the earth by foot while the women break up the soil with hand tools and seed in a small cluster behind them.

They terrace the entire landscape, slowing down heavy rains, capturing higher quantities of water and holding the soil in place. They understand the importance of erosion control, they save manure from their animals in piles outside of their village walls, they mostly use gourds to drink out of, there is no electricity beyond the main town and maybe teachers and a more successful farmer have cell phones. There is a shift with imported products showing up in the smallest village market (clothing, soaps, plastic products like basins and the like) but most people live simple, environmentally conscious lives, whether they mean to or not. Choices are limited and, thus, this limits change.

Having to move to a new site – Yayou, located in Ilubabor, a region in the western part of the country –put a lot of this in perspective. Yayou is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (interestingly, so is Konso) and the area is completely forested, many of it untouched, the endemic plant communities still intact. The markets offerings are defined by coffee. Now, it is harvest time for the small ripened reddened beans that are then dried in the sun for a few days, turned over on tarps and concrete with wooden pushing paddles, walked through to make room for air, fingers deftly stirring things up, all to prevent molding. It is tedious work but the rewards are great, even for a small yield.

Chat, a stimulant, is also grown here. It is used recreationally and, most validly, for religious reasons by Muslim communities, which Yayou mostly is. These two crops can even be found on my compound garden where a large amount of coffee beans lays out in a darkening field in the front “yard”. There are a few other plants sprinkled throughout the mix, but the main focus is the coffee trees and the small shrubs of bright green chat.  The market right now only offers potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, red onions and a few piles of yellow corn because of the intensive coffee harvest. Tomatoes are rare to find and you will never see a carrot. Ginger and turmeric grow here and the turmeric is one of the most beautiful plants I have ever seen. Never in my life did I think I would see what it looked like fresh, in root form, cut it into small pieces and let it dry in the sun to then grind and use for cooking. The added perk of such a process is your palms get stained bright yellow and waving at small children – or anyone really – is a riot.

What I am trying to get at, in the end, is that here in Yayou especially, cash crops define the market and other crops are not grown because they take up space where more expensive things can be grown and sold in Addis Ababa and to the world market. There is awareness of what coffee is worth so it is not being sold for less than its value. The same can be said of the chat and of honey (also found in traditional hives nestled in large trees in the buffer zone of the forest).   There are some people making a lot of money off of this, but the community in general still struggles to live reasonably. Not everyone has enough space to produce large amounts of marketable goods. The forested areas being protected also adds to the lack of cultivated land. Agro forestry could be used more intensively but it will take some testing out and convincing, starting with the school system and taking it to agricultural extension work from there.

I have not been here for even a month and I am sure I will learn more and more but comparisons between here and Konso cannot be helped. Awareness of three oil plants in one region exported out took after the fact of living there to set in. Here, at least, coffee is drunk multiple times in a day and has a sweet flavor not found in other areas. The coffee trees, too, hold many shades of lichen on their branches. They have beautifully scented white flowers and bright clusters of red berries to visually enjoy. Flax flowers are a bright, fall sky blue and paired with sunflowers makes another beautiful visual display. I am realizing that I am lucky to be able to see two different ways of agricultural production in one Peace Corps service. It has still been hard to move away and I miss Konso and my friends there dearly, but the opportunity to learn even more soothes some wounds. Right now, I feel like a plant getting used to new soil, sun and air. We’ll just wait and see how it all grows.