Oxfam is working with a Sudanese partner organization to respond to the humanitarian emergency that began unfolding in the summer of 2011, when armed conflict erupted between government and rebel forces in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile; in April of 2012, border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan triggered another wave of displacement in the same states; in all, more than 900,000 people have been displaced or severely affected by the recent conflicts in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
Aid providers are unable to reach many of those who are caught in this latest conflict, but an Oxfam partner has reached 45,000 people with a range of interventions, including:
Refugees from the conflict between Sudan and the SPLM-N continue to flow across the borders into Ethiopia and South Sudan. In the camps of Jamam in Upper Nile, South Sudan, many are arriving in a traumatized state, having trekked long distances without enough food or water. But the conditions in the camps where they have sought refuge are dire: residents and aid providers have had to contend with severe shortages of food and water, soft soil conditions that interfere with well drilling, and huge price increases for essentials like fuel and food.
Oxfam is helping more than 32,000 refugees in the Upper Nile region gain access to drinking water and sanitation, as well as hygiene materials like soap, and we are providing cash relief to help people cope with rising food prices.
Read more about the Jamam camps.
]]>Oxfam and our partners are now assisting more than 330,000 people in Darfur who have been affected by the conflict that began in 2003.
Armed clashes in Sudan continue to drive people from their homes. In January, more than 100,000 people fled the gold-mining area of Jebel Amir in North Darfur. Oxfam and a local partner have been assisting thousands of families with clean water, sanitation facilities, and relief materials like plastic sheeting and blankets.
Oxfam America is working with local Sudanese partners and community members to provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene programs to more than 260,000 people in camps and villages in Darfur. Our water engineers are helping maintain the wells, pumps, tanks, pipes, and taps that deliver treated water to the settlements, and our sanitation and public health staff are ensuring that camp residents have latrines, bathing areas, soap, water cans, and access to the information they need to stay healthy under challenging camp conditions.
Many people affected by the conflict no longer have the means to make a dignified living. Farmers who have been displaced from their land, herders who have lost their animals, and widows who are trying to raise children alone have a range of needs as they try to restore their incomes. Oxfam partners have offered small business grants and loans, as well as vocational training and assets like donkey carts to many of the most vulnerable residents of the camps. In rural areas affected by the conflict, we are providing seeds, plows, and horse carts for farmers, as well as small business loans.
High-efficiency stoves can address an array of problems in Darfur. In a joint program with two partners, Oxfam America has supported local camp residents to assemble and distribute more than 15,000 stoves that are more than twice as efficient as traditional three-stone fireplaces. For the women who purchase their firewood in the market, the stoves reduce the cost of fuel and ease the heavy economic pressure on their families. But for those who must trek into the countryside to gather firewood, facing the risk of assault from armed bandits and militias, fuel-efficient stoves are even more critical. Read more about how the stoves have been making a difference.
Oxfam America's fuel-efficient stove program is helping protect Darfur’s fragile environment by reducing the need for firewood and charcoal.
Other environmental initiatives include planting and protecting tens of thousands of tree seedlings around school and camps for displaced people.
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A shorter commitment won't get the job done. It takes time to help people build skills and infrastructure, to get policies changed, and to ensure that governments spend their money more effectively.
Smart development demands monitoring and evaluation. Organizations should be accountable to report not only what they do, but also how they measure it. Don't believe stories that guarantee long-term impact after one or two years' investment; that's barely time to lay some groundwork.
We all crave the easy answer, the quick solution, but if eradicating poverty were simple, people living in poverty would have sorted it out long ago. They may lack resources like land, but they certainly don't lack intelligence or insight. Poverty is a global challenge—one that we can overcome together, but listening and learning from people living in poverty, and developing solutions with them, takes time and sustained effort.
This issue of OXFAMExchange includes inspiring stories, but they are just snapshots from a family album: moments in a long journey together. Each story is ultimately about perseverance and the need for long-term commitment.
Puddles swallow trucks to their underbellies. And everywhere, green sweeps the hillsides: delicate shoots of teff, so vibrant it looks lit from within, mix with fields of corn, the stalks thickening by the day and inching skywards.
But here in this village of about 1,100 households in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, they’re holding their breath. Will the rain stay steady? Will it fall in enough abundance to fatten the grains and produce a bountiful harvest on which so many here depend?
At night, in my hotel room in Abi Adi, I listen as the rain pelts the metal roofs and pours into the courtyards and muddy streets below. I think about all the uncertainties farmers in Adi Ha face, and then I think about the south and what happens when those uncertainties become life-threatening. There, where southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and south-central Somalia meet, a severe drought and food crisis has snared almost 12 million people, farmers and herders both. The UN has already declared famine in two parts of Somalia. And some areas of the region are the driest they have been in six decades.
Though the rain in Tigray brings hope, nothing is certain. Not when the weather has become increasingly erratic. And not when the vast majority of farmers rely on rain to feed their fields. Countless families here—like those now struggling in the south—have known the ravages of drought.
But in Adi Ha, and a growing number of communities in Tigray, farmers now have a means of managing some of that unpredictability: weather insurance for their crops.
Initiated in 2007 by Oxfam America and a host of partners, including the Relief Society of Tigray and Swiss Re, a new program has found a way for even the poorest farmers to afford insurance. Instead of cash, these farmers can pay for their premiums with labor, a resource they have in abundance. If insufficient rain falls during a critical period of the growing cycle, and their teff, wheat, or barley suffers, farmers will receive a payout—an infusion of cash that can help them cover their losses and weather the rough times.
“This insurance is very good,” said Selas Samson Biru, who paid 200 birr ($11.75) this year to cover half a hectare of teff—a tiny grain that is a staple of the Ethiopian diet. “The insurance is good because it’s saving our assets in a bad year.”
As she spoke, a heavy sky pressed down on the fields of Adi Ha. Nearby, farmers coaxed their oxen through rocky fields, hurrying to plow and plant. It felt like rain. But Biru was worried still. She expected her corn would be OK, but the teff?
“We have some doubt,” she said.
Readings at a small rain gauge across the river from one of Biru’s fields showed that, on the Ethiopian calendar for July, rain had fallen on only seven days until a thorough dousing on July 24, when 50 millimeters (2 inches) soaked the fields. Before then, the heaviest rain measured just 30 millimeters (1.2 inches).
With the green that rain has brought to Adi Ha, it’s hard to fathom just how dry the south is. And in fact Biru, far from any access to the Internet or TV, said she had not heard about the drought and suffering there.
“We are sorry about that news,” she said, worry creasing her brow. “We feel that type of drought might come to us.” And then she brightened.
“Have they bought insurance?” Biru asked. “This is one of the most important things that needs to be scaled up.”
That’s in the works. Through a new partnership, Oxfam America and the World Food Programme, together with Swiss Re, are helping to bring this insurance model—and a package of other resource-management techniques including savings, credit, and disaster risk reduction strategies—deeper into Ethiopia and across three new countries.
It won’t come in time to help families in the south, but the disaster there may finally spur some serious international interest in finding long-term solutions—like weather insurance—to the devastation drought brings.
]]>Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.
People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:
Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.
]]>More than 6 million farmers across the country grow teff, but it’s here, in rugged Adi Ha, where rocks litter the fields like confetti, that this new kind of insurance may take root and spread. An initiative coordinated by Oxfam America and supported by more than a dozen partners, its goal is to help some of the world’s poorest farmers bounce back when drought destroys their crops. And the payout isn’t only in cash. It’s in confidence—the kind that may help propel people out of poverty.
“Without insurance, poor farmers who experience drought might run through all their savings, fall into debt, or sell their livestock and other valuables—often to ruinous results,” says Mengesha Gebremichael, the micro-insurance officer at the Relief Society of Tigray and one of the project’s managers. “In contrast, insured farmers will be more resilient to those shocks. They’ll be in a better position to take out small loans that could help them make big improvements in their next harvest—loans for things like high-yield seeds. They’ll be more confident that they can pay the money back knowing they have insurance to support them if trouble strikes.”
June to October marks the main rainy season in Adi Ha, a critical time for local farmers who depend on the skies to water their teff fields. For poor families living close to the edge, where even a $20 or $30 loss can push them over, there is no room for mishap. Without rain, they face disaster. That’s where the weather insurance comes in. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time, farmers who have purchased the insurance can receive a payout to help cover their losses.
In Ethiopia, families have always had traditional ways of coping with extraordinary expenses. If they lose their livestock in a disaster, such as drought, those who are better off will contribute an animal or two to help them rebuild their herds, for instance. Families may also share seeds for planting, or food when it’s in terribly short supply.
But with climate change—and the erratic weather that it brings—the traditional means of surviving bad times may no longer be enough.
“Climate change is dramatically increasing agricultural risk across the planet,” says Marjorie Victor Brans, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam America. “The frequency of droughts and other shocks in Adi Ha is likely to increase, and poor farmers will be among the hardest hit. It’s a hugely challenging phenomenon.”
With 85 percent of Ethiopians employed in farming, much of it rain-fed, the need for new tools to manage the risks is huge. But the market for insurance is miniscule: only about 300,000 people in a country of nearly 80 million now have it. Extending the option to rural areas is loaded with challenges, not the least of them being the concern that poor farmers simply don’t have the money to pay for premiums—even the smallest one.
This new program has solved that problem with a simple solution: It has arranged for the poorest farmers to use their labor to buy insurance, tapping into a new social security initiative the Ethiopian government launched a few years ago. Called the Productive Safety Net Program, or PSNP, it helps about 8 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents by providing them with food or cash in exchange for work. Through the PSNP, 130 Adi Ha farmers are now working extra days on community projects, such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation, to pay for their premiums. In this pilot year, Oxfam provided funds to the PSNP to cover this part of the project.
The option to trade labor for insurance has substantially boosted the number of farmers able to participate in the program, nearly doubling the enrollment that was expected.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Medhin Reda, a single mother who will be working 24 days for her premium. “That is the only asset I have.”
For Selas Samson Biru, who is spending 192 birr on insurance, it will help address the uncertainties that have always been part of farming, especially now that global warming may be altering familiar weather patterns.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” she says. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
And the insurance may be extra helpful because it was tailored specifically for farmers like Biru. In fact, she was one of five community members chosen by villagers to join the insurance design team. Twenty-one other farmers participated in a series of test workshops on climate change and financial literacy. Focus group discussions and economic risk simulations carried out in the community helped the design team understand what kind of insurance product would work best in Adi Ha. And on the day of enrollment, about 600 farmers showed up for a host of activities explaining the offerings, including musical performances, a play, peer-to-peer outreach, and financial training.
“Today is a historic day for the farmers of Adi Ha,” said Brans as the activities wound to a close that day and organizers counted the final tally of takers. Among the 200 were 75 women, which represents about 22 percent of all female-headed households in Adi Ha—one of the most vulnerable groups the project is aiming to help. On average, farmers are paying 138 birr for their premiums—or a little more than $12 each. Some chose packages that allowed them to pay as little as 76 birr, or about $6.75. The maximum premium was 288 birr, or just over $23.
“We are experimenting,” said Gebru Kahsay a few months after investing 192 birr into an insurance package. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”
Lots of learning has already taken place during the 18 months Oxfam and its partners spent in preparation for the launch of this project. And each of those partners has been contributing its own expertise. Besides the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST, one of the largest aid groups in Africa which has worked closely with the people of Adi Ha, other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company, an Ethiopian firm that is providing the insurance; Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers which has helped fund the launch and is providing technical expertise; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which is providing research on climate data. Additionally, the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI, the primary provider of loans to families in Adi Ha, helped both to design the pilot and to educate farmers about the pros and cons of insurance.
“We had to work very hard to design a risk management package that was affordable and attractive to farmers, while still being potentially profitable to the insurance industry,” says Bekabil Fufa, an agricultural expert in Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa regional office. “And we had to make it compelling to government and donors who feel it will address the threat of climate change.”
With a solid model now in place, Oxfam is planning in the coming year to expand the initiative into four new villages in Tigray--the region where Adi Ha is located—and into one village in Amhara, another drought-prone region to the south. Eventually, the project partners would like to see weather insurance offered to poor farmers throughout Ethiopia.
It will require a leap of faith by farmers across the country as well as support from the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector,” says Gebremichael. “But given the long lead times required to build resiliency to climate change, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to try.”
]]>Reda, 45, is a farmer in Adi Ha, a collection of small villages in Tigray, a rocky region of northern Ethiopia. Here, rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and for the farmers who depend on its regularity to ensure their fields will produce food for their families, the change in weather patterns is deeply troubling. Without rain, the crops of hundreds of farmers in Adi Ha won’t grow.
Already this year the rains were six weeks late, coming in mid July instead of early June. That meant the corn got a late start and some farmers didn’t bother with sorghum at all. Still, hopes were high for teff, the tiny grain that is a staple for people here—and across Ethiopia where 6 million farmers grow the nutrient-rich cereal. Reda is one of them.
But this year, she and 199 other small farmers in Adi Ha weren’t taking any chances. When Oxfam and its partners suggested a way to buffer the hardships Mother Nature might bring, the farmers embraced it—even if few had ever heard of such a thing. The proposal? Weather insurance designed for their teff. If the rain failed to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers who bought the insurance would receive a payout to cover some of their losses. The insurance is being offered by the Nyala Insurance Company and Swiss Re. Other organizations partnering on the project include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DESCI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
“Because of repeated drought, which really affected me, I joined the insurance with the understanding it might solve my problems,” said Reda.
For a long time, most people in the insurance business thought that poor farmers, like many of those in Adi Ha, were uninsurable. Where would they get the cash to buy the insurance? This pilot program has answered that with a simple, and ingenious, solution. Reda is paying for her premium—like she does for other important things in her life—with her labor.
Reda, along with 65 percent of all those who have signed up for the insurance, is a participant in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, an initiative that provides cash and food for some of the country’s poorest people in exchange for their work on community improvements. She’ll work 24 extra days this year on projects that benefit Adi Ha—such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation—to cover the cost of her premium.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Reda. “That is the only asset I have.”
A single mother and head of an all-girl household at the moment—she lives with three of her daughters; a fourth daughter lives in a nearby town; and a son is away studying—Reda works hard to keep together all the pieces of a difficult life. With one of her daughters, Abbadit Girmay, who is now 19, Reda hauled to their hillside site every stone of the hut they now live in. And to build it, she hired a mason to mortar the rocks together—paying him with a summer’s worth of weeding in his fields.
To get her own fields plowed—she has two, totaling a half hectare of land--Reda hires herself out each planting season, working three full days for the man who owns the oxen, in exchange for one day of his plowing.
Work is Reda’s currency.
"That’s why I’m thin," she says, with a wry smile.
In the corn patch just below her house, Reda stands bent at the waist , her hands flying over the weeds as she yanks and clumps them swiftly into small piles. Close behind, and weeding nearly as fast, Tekleweini Girmay, 7, follows her mother through the stalks. Reda—and necessity—have taught her well.
But a farmer’s life is not what Reda envisions for her youngest child—or any of her daughters. She wants them to have what she never had: an education.
“The season is not good enough for agriculture. Our soil has become poor and they need fertilizer,” she says. “I don’t want my children to be farmers. Those who have started their education I want them to continue and have jobs. And those who haven’t started, I want them to start.” Tekleweini will be among those newly enrolled when the next session of school begins.
And Reda will be, too.
She has signed up for an adult literacy program that REST is offering.
And though Reda can’t read, her mind is filled with news of the world beyond Adi Ha that she absorbs from a small radio she keeps tucked on a shelf in her hut. Voice of America in Tigrinya and Dmitsi Woyane or the voice of the ruling party are among her favorite stations. Sometimes, Reda will stay up until 11 p.m. listening—when there are working batteries, that is. They are expensive, about 10 birr each, or about most of what she would earn for a day’s labor.
There’s no electricity in this stone-walled compound, and few creature comforts. At night, light in Reda’s cramped hut comes from a hanging bulb hooked to a flashlight battery. She also has two small oil lamps. Household wares hang from the ceiling beamed with logs and storage vessels stand in the shadows in the corners. Two mud seats built into the walls near the door serve as beds.
In early August, green washes the hills that stretch below Reda’s hut, a sign that the rain—now that it has finally come—is ample enough for the moment. Her corn is doing well, she says with satisfaction.
And her teff?
The seeds have been in the ground for just a week and years of experience have left her circumspect.
“It’s too early to say if it’s good or bad,” says Reda.
]]>In a pilot program coordinated by Oxfam America along with a host of local partners, these farmers have bought weather insurance designed for their teff, a staple grain here and across Ethiopia. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time—and their teff does poorly—the insurance will cover some of their losses. Partners in the initiative include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
The rain gauges, like the one in Biru’s yard, measure the precipitation in different spots across Adi Ha where rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it ever harder for farmers to eke a living from this rocky part of the world.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” says Biru. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
Biru, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance has become an expert at managing the vicissitudes of life in Adi Ha and together with her husband and six children, they have built a measure of security for themselves.
Now 48, Biru was married at 15. But unlike some of her peers at the time, she had managed to attend school through the fourth grade, and when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, took control of the area, Biru stood out. Perhaps it was because of all the questions she asked, she says.
She joined the organization in about 1979 and soon assumed a leadership role among other women—a twist of fate that allowed her to develop the confidence that continues to feed her successes today. Biru is not afraid to try new things—including insurance, a concept few in her community knew much about before this pilot was launched. Biru became a member of the local team that helped design the project.
But before that, she had other experiences that allowed her to see the advantages of managing household money in different ways. Through a local microfinance institution, Biru has taken out a series of loans that have helped her to build a herd of livestock that now includes goats, oxen, and donkeys. She has used the proceeds from the sale of some of those goats to support two of her children as they make their way through university.
Income from the goats, which at one point numbered about 70, also helped the family finance the construction of a new house with a metal roof a few years ago. It consists of a long, rectangular room with perimeter seats built into the walls, two beds at the far end, and a high ceiling that helps the interior stay cool on hot days.
And though the hungry season is inching closer—the time before the harvests when the food supply of many families runs low—Biru still has a supply a grain. In a shed separate from her house, tall vessels stand against the back wall. As she uncorks the bottom of one of them, the grain makes a satisfying rush as it streams out Baskets on the floor brim with corn, finger millet, and teff.
Biru’s family has another source of bounty as well: the Tsalet River, which feeds an irrigation system constructed about 10 years ago by the Relief Society of Tigray with funding from Oxfam. More than 400 households now benefit from it. Water funneled through a series of channels connected to a dam across the river irrigates a quarter hectare of land from which Biru harvests green peppers, bananas, melons, guava, and coffee beans. That regular supply of water may free her from some of the worry about rain.
But the irrigation system doesn’t water her teff. Across Adi Ha, farmers depend on the rainy season for that job. The main one, the kiremt, stretches from June into September. A shorter rainy season, the belg, runs from February to May. This year, the kiremt started late: the rain didn’t really begin to fall in substantial amounts until mid July, making it hard for farmers who plant sorghum and corn.
“For maize, the rain is not good. There was no rain early,” says Biru.
With her rain gauge, Biru keeps careful count of exactly how much rain falls, recording the precipitation on a small chart. Pulling it out to show some visitors one day in early August, she notes the range from half a millimeter the day before—barely a sprinkle—to 40 millimeters in a downpour on July 3.
Her crops aren’t the only thing Biru worries about when it comes to water. Her family also needs a steady supply for drinking and cooking. And often, the job of fetching it falls to her. Potable water is about an hour’s walk away, and someone in the household makes that trip once a day, sometimes with a donkey to haul the heavy load home. But a less reliable source that the family uses just for cooking, is a good deal closer—a 15-minute hike from Biru’s home.
Grabbing a jug, Biru heads down the path from her house, slowing her pace so the city slickers who are visiting can keep up. She’s going to show them what’s required to keep a family hydrated in Adi Ha, where there’s no municipal system pumping water through every household tap.
The walk includes a scramble down a steep ledge—and the knowledge of a return hike up, lugging the jug heavy with water. On the way, Biru stops at a mound of stones, bending to kiss one reverentially: below them, in an oasis of trees and thick bushes—one of the few forest-like spots still standing in the area—sits a local church. Tradition demands that the woods around the church be left alone. They’re sacred. And that may account for the small spring that still gurgles at their base.
It’s here that Biru stops to fill her jug, scooping cupfuls of water from the shallows while trying to leave the silt behind. Ten minutes later, she stands and heads home under a gray sky full of the promise of rain.
Will it be ample enough to guarantee a harvest?
“For teff, currently it’s good,” says Biru. But if it doesn’t last, she now has insurance to fall back on.
]]>But for Kahsay, a 52-year-old farmer in the Adi Ha area of Tigray in northern Ethiopia, a good deal has changed in the quarter century since so many of his neighbors lost all their crops including teff, a staple grain.
More than a third of the families in Adi Ha grow the tiny seed. It’s rich in nutrients and serves as the base for a pancake-like bread—injera—that many people eat. The hay left after threshing is also nourishing for animals. And for families that have some to spare, the grain commands a good price in the market.
Still, for those who depend on rain to help their teff thrive—it’s the second most widely cultivated rain-fed crop in Adi Ha—growing this cereal can be an iffy proposition, especially as global warming may be forcing a change in weather patterns. The rain came late this year to Adi Ha, preventing some farmers, like Kahsay, from planting early crops of sorghum—and heightening the need for a hearty harvest of teff.
But this year, Kahsay has a back-up plan if the rain doesn’t cooperate: weather insurance. He’s one of 200 farmers in Adi Ha who decided to participate in a pilot program organized by Oxfam America and carried out with the help of numerous local organizations, including the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST. Other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re: the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
The farmers—some paying with cash, others with labor—have bought varying amounts of insurance designed specifically for their teff. If the rain fails to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers will receive a payout to cover some of their losses.
“According to my belief, this insurance is important to protect us from migrating in a drought in search of food,” says Kahsay, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance. “It saves the lives of the family during drought.”
Irrigation is also insurance
Kahsay has a large family to be concerned about. He’s the father of nine children, the youngest of whom is just 2. But the weather insurance he is trying out isn’t his only defense against bad times: irrigation also serves as a cushion.
Kahsay is among the more fortunate farmers in Adi Ha who have access to an irrigation system constructed by REST with funding from Oxfam a little more than 10 years ago. With concrete canals and a dam across the Tsalet River, the system has made major improvements to the traditional watering network that would clog with debris during heavy rains. In the month that it would take farmers to clean out the mess, their crops would often die.
For Kahsay, the modern system has been a boon. Though he irrigates just one quarter of a hectare of land, it provides him with an array of produce—oranges, coffee, papayas, tomatoes, onions—that he can sell. In fact, 95 percent of what he grows on his irrigated plot goes to market and the income buffers his family from the hard times that farmers, who depend only on rain-fed harvests, have no choice but to grapple with as best they can.
But Kahsay also tills two hectares of land that rely solely on rain. He sews them with corn, finger millet, sorghum, and teff—and most of the harvests from these fields get consumed by his family.
Wrapping a shawl about his shoulders and tucking an umbrella under his arm—it’s early August and it’s been raining, off and on, for several weeks—Kahsay strides down the slope from where his compound sits atop a rock ledge. Though he’s been battling malaria, he moves fast toward his fields, with a string of visitors straggling behind.
Soon, he reaches an expanse of sandy soil, dusty on the surface. Shoving up through the plowed ridges are shafts of green, so delicate they could almost be a trick of the eye in the brilliance of the afternoon sun. This is Kahsay’s teff field, well-guarded by his seven-year-old grandson, Aregawi Mulugeta, standing with a stick under the shade of a tree. Kahsay greets him heartily, and together they trek to the middle of the field to examine the shoots.
The teff is doing well, he reports.
But Kahsay says he would have liked to have had weather insurance that covers too much rainfall, not too little. In this region of sandy soils, heavy rains that come too fast can be as much of a hazard for teff as drought, and 1997 is still vivid in his mind because of that. That was the year flooding destroyed 70 percent of the teff he had planted.
Despite the water-logging, Kahsay has also seen a troubling trend toward increased dryness over the decades. Like all farmers, he watches the weather closely and analyzes the conditions.
Drought used to strike every eight years or so, he says. But now the cycle seems to be speeding up. And with drought comes the hardship of food shortages—for both people and the animals that help farmers plow their fields and provide them with milk.
With those trends becoming ever clearer, the purchase of weather insurance may turn out to be one of the best adaptations the people of Adi Ha can make.
“We are experimenting,” says Kahsay. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”
]]>In a conference room far from their native Liben in southern Ethiopia, the men painted a picture of that place—its herders, their hardships—that was so alive those listening to the stories could almost hear the cattle's hooves on the hard, dry earth and sense the struggles of the families who depended on them.
"These marginalized people living in the bush, in the dark, I see some light (for them)," said Kararsa. "I want to expand the light. I can't do it alone. I need people like you."
Their plan was simple: To help local herders by improving the health of their cattle and finding a way to educate their children.
They weren't looking for a handout: They were looking for a partnership. And they had come as community activists armed with local ideas for solving local problems. They even had a small reserve of cash—and livestock—donated by the Boren people to launch their initiative: the Liben Pastoral Development Association.
Less than a year later, this newly formed group now has a two-room office in the town of Negelle—funded completely by the community. It has refurbished a youth hostel so that children will have a place to stay when they attend school in Negelle while their families move off in search of fresh pasture for their animals. And the association has inaugurated its first project with Oxfam's help: a tick bath designed to rid cattle of the troublesome insects that have caused herders extensive hardship.
The ticks have been taking a toll. They cause mastitis in the teats of the cows, blocking the flow of their milk, and depriving herders of an important source of food for their families.
That day in the Addis office, Kote had come prepared with the facts. His fledging development group had surveyed 100 families in the Liben area and found that out of the 700 milking cows among them, 502 of them had mastitis.
"You can imagine the impact of this problem at the household level," said Kote. "This has great impact on food security for Boren families."
But the problem, back then, was that there was nowhere for the herders to take their cows for treatment, and some of the traditional methods of tick control were no longer effective. In the past, before there were permanent settlements scattered around Liben, herders had kept the ticks at bay by burning the rangeland. The government now bans that practice.
Using a long nail, herders collect as many of the ticks as they can off their animals. They rely on chickens and a local bird called a "chiri" to help by feasting on the engorged insects. And in some places, herders also use a mixture of salt and tobacco which they rub on their animals to discourage the bugs from attaching themselves. But more needed to be done. Lots more.
And that's why the Liben Pastoral Development Association's first construction project was the cattle dipping bath located about an hour's drive from Negelle. It's a long concrete canal filled with water and a combination of chemicals. From a steep entrance at one end, the cows wade in and swim to the other side where they walk out into a draining area. Within 30 minutes, the ticks begin to drop off. A committee elected by the local community is in charge of running the bath.
It's an investment the community takes seriously: local families raised more than half the cost of the bath. Oxfam's contribution was $25,794. The project is benefiting about 25,000 people and has been in constant use since it opened.
At a recent inauguration ceremony, Liben residents thanked Oxfam in a way that befits a herding community: They honored the organization by roasting a sheep and placing a piece of sheep skin on the wrists of visiting staffers.
For the people of Liben, this is just the beginning. The same day as the inauguration ceremony, the Liben Pastoral Development Association held a fund-raiser for its next project. Kicking off the event was a well-known elder who donated a camel—which could fetch up to $290 at market. His gift set the tone. By the end of the event, the community had raised about $10,000.
"The self-mobilization of this impoverished herding community was inspiring to see," said Tim Delaney, an Oxfam staffer who documented the day's events and tallied the donations: 55 cows, 73 goats and sheep, seven camels, and almost $2,000 in cash. "These are people whose only assets are their animals. Yet they were willing to give not because they had excess, but because they realize the importance of these projects. And they know they can't sit back and wait for donors to come along and offer money."
What's next on the agenda for the Liben Pastoral Development Association? With support from Oxfam, the group has plans to improve the water supply for about 5,000 people in the village of Hadhesse Korati. The association plans to install a generator, a reservoir, and two-and-a-half miles of pipeline so that the village and its school, health post, and veterinary clinic can all have a clean, reliable source of water.
A year ago, Kote spoke about his dreams for establishing night schools so students could attend classes after they had finished their herding chores. And he stressed the need for more health clinics in the area. For women having difficult labors, the nearest functioning clinic is more than 60 miles away. Carried on stretchers, they often die before they reach it, he said.
"As a Boren man, I feel ashamed," said Kote last year. "I can't do anything for my people. People are suffering from illness. They're thirsty. They're signing (their names) by fingerprint."
But now, Kote—and the herders of Liben—have plenty to be proud of, and a way to keep moving forward.
"Social change could not have been more clearly seen than at the inauguration of the cattle bath that day in Liben," said Delaney. "Everyone in our group was amazed at how motivated this community was and what they are capable of doing."
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