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.”
]]>"Resuscitating Doha is essential to right the rigged rules of trade, but what's been simmering on the WTO stove will simply not deliver for poor countries, said Oxfam America president Raymond C. Offenheiser. "The financial crisis, which started in developed countries but is taking its worst toll on developing countries, should be the impetus for a change in course."
In a new report released today called "Empty Promises," Oxfam details how the Doha Round has become an exercise in prying open developing country markets rather than an effort to rebalance decades of unfair agricultural and industrial trade rules. In the midst of a global economic crisis, a food crisis, and a climate crisis, nations with the least blame and with the least capacity to cope with the consequent effects must not have to pay even more to enable their economies to develop, according to the report.
Over 50 million people stand to lose their jobs, remittances are collapsing, and growth in sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to fall by 70 percent this year trapping 90 million more people in poverty, because of the crisis. Food prices meanwhile remain high for poor consumers: by the end of 2008 a further 109 million people had been added to the ranks of hungry, topping 1 billion people worldwide. As the world experiences the sharpest drop in trade in 80 years, a "development" trade deal—as originally promised—remains crucial, according to Oxfam.
"Now is the time for WTO members to come back to the negotiating table, recognize that the current crisis provides an opportunity to address urgent development needs, and change the course of negotiations, much as they did nearly eight years ago in Doha," said Offenheiser. "At this time of desperate need for a change of course, the Doha Round has to step up to deliver on its development promise. There is little credit left for another failure."
The welcome political commitment from the G8 could lead to a fresh start to negotiations, but it cannot be business as usual. In the past eight years, developed countries have used the talks to continue to push to open up new export markets. Developing countries have resisted, saying they were promised a deal that would give them space to protect their farmers and new industries, an end to rich country trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, and more access to rich markets for their farmers and industries.
The widespread food price crisis has shown that food and livelihood security cannot depend solely on market forces. Development, rather than liberalization, has to be the central objective of negotiations and trade rules must respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people first and foremost, according to Oxfam. It is the responsibility of WTO member states to analyze the role of trade in the recent global crises so that the Doha negotiations take into account the new global context and contribute to a solution, rather than exacerbate the problem.
"What's on the table is no silver bullet since it continues to favor the richest and biggest farmers and industrialists in the US and Europe and sidelines the needs of the poor," said Offenheiser. "We have seen what can be done when countries find the resolve to avert problems at home, and this resolve must be translated to the multilateral trade agenda so that the much-needed conclusion of the Doha Round can be achieved in a manner that addresses developing country needs first and foremost."
]]>Rain has finally returned some green to the pastures on this broad lowland, and as the cows mow down the new blades and inhale them hungrily, Shitaye talks about her own hunger—months-long, paralyzing, intractable. Shitaye is not her real name. It has been changed to protect her security. Drought killed the harvest she had hoped to reap in June. Since January, family meals have consisted of a bit of corn and coffee in the morning with nothing else for the rest of the day. And some days there has been no food at all.
Here, in the West Arsi Zone of central Ethiopia, the convergence of failed rains, chronic poverty, and a wild spike in food prices, like those now roiling other parts of the globe, have left 320,000 people needing relief, according to government figures. Only some of them have gotten aid. Recently, the Ethiopian government more than doubled its figures for those requiring help as a consequence of drought that has gripped parts of the country. Now, the government says, 4.6 million people nationwide—up from 2.2 million earlier this year—need emergency assistance, and 75,000 children are suffering with severe acute malnutrition.
Aid workers report that in northern parts of Ethiopia's Somali region, where most people make their living as herders, rain has not fallen in two years. South, in the Dire district of Oromia's Borena Zone, the 45 days of rain that normally replenish the area between March and May dwindled to 15 last year, and just five this year, leaving pasturelands parched and fields too dry to produce the basic staples people depend on. According to the government, almost 62,000 people live in the district and 90 percent of them now need assistance.
Shitaye, a widow and grandmother of 10, says the current troubles are even worse than the hunger that killed about a million people in Ethiopia in 1984. This time, she says, there is no way families can supplement their meager household stocks by selling things in the market to buy food: Grain prices have climbed far out of reach.
In area markets toward the latter half of June, a quintal of corn was selling for 600 birr, or $64, and teff, a type of grain from which people make a pancake-like bread, had spiraled up to 1,100 birr, or $117, for the same volume—prices that are three times their normal amount.
In West Arsi, a major infusion of food for people and seeds for their fields will be essential to avoid an even deeper crisis next year. In its latest appeal, the Ethiopian government says it needs $325 million to meet the needs of beneficiaries across the country.
Oxfam International is responding to the crisis with a $2.42 million initiative aimed at helping 225,000 people in three regions—Oromia, Afar, Somali. Programs include the provision of clean drinking water for families and livestock, livestock vaccinations and feeding, the distribution of seeds to allow families to plant crops for the next harvest, and cash-for-work initiatives to help people earn some money.
"We're wondering if we'll survive until September," says a man sitting near Shitaye.
"We rest everything on our creator," she adds, cradling one of her grandchildren. "We beg him that everything will turn out to be good."
]]>In April, the Ethiopian government announced that 2.18 million people now need emergency food assistance. Citing the toll water shortages have taken on crops and pastureland, Ethiopia has asked donors for $67.7 million in aid to help it meet the nutritional needs of people in six of the country's nine states, as well as needs for emergency water provision, animal care, and seeds. The government has also said an additional 947,383 people would have their emergency needs met through Ethiopia's existing safety net.
Oxfam and the local groups with which it partners are responding to the crisis in the Somali and Oromia regions through a multi-pronged approach which not only addresses the immediate requirements families have for water, but also provides some help to reduce the risk of hardship during the next water shortage.
In Ethiopia, the daily chore of fetching water usually falls to women and children. In drought situations, when local sources such as shallow ponds or wells dry up, the trek for this essential resource becomes even more grueling.
The Liben Pastoralist Development Association, an Oxfam partner working in the southern part of the country, realized how acute the water shortage had become when it began receiving reports of women, some of them pregnant, walking more than 18 miles from their villages to the nearest water point. Laden with 20-liter jugs of water, some of those women miscarried. Others delivered their babies along the road.
In one part of the Somali region, Oxfam learned that people were selling jerricans of water for 30 birr, or about $3.20—a small fortune in a country where poverty is widespread. Some private businesses had even started importing water from Hargessa in Somaliland.
An assessment team that traveled to the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia reported in March that more than 17,000 animals had died since January in the 11 districts it visited. Herding families in the area depend on those animals—cows, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys—not only for food but also as a critical source of income. The team found that drought had prompted the closing of 29 schools in that area because there was no water for the students. And local officials told team members that many elderly residents were showing signs of malnutrition—a possible indication that the Borena people were using one of their traditional coping strategies. In their culture, the first priority of women during food shortages is to invest in the youngest generation: children eat before their elders do.
Families in these dry pastoral areas have developed a number of ways to cope with recurrent drought. Some of them have been able to keep reserves of hay on hand for their animals when the pasture dries up. Sometimes, people slaughter their cows and goats and use the meat to help feed their families. When they can, they hunt for wood to sell or to turn into charcoal. If families lose their entire herds, other families contribute animals to get a new herd started.
But over the years, the persistent crises have depleted the assets of many people and exhausted their ability to cope. For herders, their traditional means of managing are also running headlong into modern realities. For instance, the populations of both people and their animals are growing. The allocation of communal grazing areas to private investors and a system of regionalization is limiting the amount of land herders can have access to. And bush, once burned off by fires that have since been banned, continues to encroach on valuable pastureland.
One of the consequences of the current crisis is a plunge in the value of animals. Without enough water or pasture they become sick, and many die. The Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, an Oxfam partner, reports that the drop in value of livestock has been extreme in districts such as Dire and Dillo in the Borena zone.
And herders are facing a double hit. As they are earn less for their animals, they are simultaneously confronted with spiraling costs for grain—a food staple. Gayo notes that grain prices have jumped by almost 100 percent in some districts.
To help ease some of the severe hardships caused by the drought, Oxfam is working with four local groups to distribute water, provide needy animals with feed and veterinary care, and rehabilitate a series of local ponds so they can provide water in the future.
With support from Oxfam, the Liben Pastoralist Development Initiative's plans have called for providing drinking water to 6,000 people in two areas in the Liben District of the Oromia region's Guji Zone. The water is being trucked in from wells about 28 miles away and stored in four large tanks—and providing enough to allow each person about 4 gallons a day.
The Liben group is also transporting hay and a wheat-bran feed into the region to help shore up the strength of the animals on which people depend. But in an indication of how challenging it can be to work in remote areas, the nearest place Liben can find the necessary fodder is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, more than 370 miles to the north.
In the Dillo and Dhas districts of the Borena Zone, Action for Development is restoring three wells that typically serve 4,000 to 5,000 head of livestock each day. But because of the drought and shrinking water supplies elsewhere, the number of animals relying on water from these sources could double. The plan calls for the purchase of generators and sub pumps to get these wells running at maximum efficiency.
Like the Liben group, Action for Development is also trucking water in to Dillo and Dhas to help more than 5,000 people with access to a clean supply. The trucks are transporting the water from wells up to 34 miles away.
An estimated 13,500 people and 2,500 head of cattle will benefit from a series of projects the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative is also carrying out with Oxfam's help, including the restoration of two ponds in the Borena zone. Ponds provide one of the central sources of water for animals in the area, but during long dry spells they dry up, especially if silt has made them shallow.
By hiring local people to deepen the ponds, Gayo is able to provide families with an important source of income while also helping them to increase the holding capacity of these critical water sources.
"Rehabilitation of ponds during the dry season tremendously increases their capacities and enables them to serve for a longer period of time during drought," said Gayo in its grant application to Oxfam. Gayo pointed to its successes with three ponds in the Moyale area during the 2006 drought.
"The three ponds rehabilitated in response to the drought have still enough water and serve the community at the moment," Gayo said.
]]>But this year, when these rivers spilled their banks, the consequences were severe. A team of local officials who visited 10 districts in the Gambella region in the end of September reported that the floods had displaced 135,721 people. The flooding killed two people and left 970 heads of livestock dead. High water still surrounded more than 19,000 people at the time of the assessment. Some districts were accessible only by boat.
Now, many people are in need of help. Food, shelter, and blankets are top on the list.
Together with its local partner, Envision Beyond Basic Needs Association, or EBBA, Oxfam America has launched a $39,000 emergency relief project to help about 8,500 people, almost half of whom are women. Plans called for the distribution of blankets for warmth and plastic sheets for shelter to 1,693 families in five localities.
"We are prepared to do more if the request comes through," said Dawit Beyene, Oxfam America's deputy director of humanitarian response. "The flooding continues and subsequent information we got revealed much more damage than we initially received." Five health posts, 20 schools, two farmer training centers, and nine clinics were also damaged by the floods.
Most of the people in Gambella, which is a low-lying region along the border with Sudan, make their living by fishing from the rivers, working small farms, or herding animals. Despite the regular flooding, villagers settle on the banks of region's rivers to pursue their livelihoods. Now, Oxfam is exploring more permanent ways of helping people cope with the challenges of their environment.
"We're discussing targeting Gambella for more preparedness work—such as establishing a permanent warehouse for emergency supplies as well as helping to increase the capacity of the local organizations with which we work in the region," said Beyene.
]]>"When you educate your children, you provide a good generation for your community," says Abbis, 50.
That's the mantra that has helped to make her such a successful member of the Tea and Food Sellers Cooperative operating in the sprawling, dusty Elshabe market in Khartoum. It's one of three women's cooperatives that Oxfam America's partner, the Sudan Development Association or SDA, helped to launch. And now, with a new $50,000 grant from Oxfam, SDA is set to further expand its outreach to women vendors in the city by offering skills and management training, exploring new economic opportunities for them, and facilitating loans that will allow them to increase their incomes.
Established in 1990, SDA's central mission is to empower women. It started with the simplest of projects: a study of women vendors in Khartoum's markets—a group of people whose numbers had surged, but who faced few opportunities and little social support.
At the time, drought and conflict had driven many women and their children to Khartoum where the only way they could make money to support themselves was to sell food or tea in the markets, said Rugaia Salih Mohamed, SDA's program director. But they were not well-received.
"They were viewed as inferior," says Mohamed. And often, they were harassed or had their goods confiscated.
But with SDA's help, the women came together and formed a series of cooperatives, which offered them protection under the law, as well as financial and technical support—in short, a way for them to pull themselves out of the poverty that saddled them.
"Now, they know their rights," says Mohamed. "They can support their families and they don't need others to support them. It's liberating."
Among the projects the women launched was the Women Food and Tea Sellers Cooperative Restaurant. Housed in a long, narrow room in a building inside the market, the restaurant has a handful of tables and chairs at one end and a charcoal fire burning next to the wall. Co-op members can cook and sell their food here.
"They don't just stick to selling food and tea. They help others claim their rights," adds Mohamed. "Now, their children are going to university and they acquire other places themselves."
A few alleys away, in the mottled light of an expansive stall, co-op member Hiat Adam, draped in a peach-colored wrap, is serving tea from behind a tiny table. Each serving, offered in small, clear glasses, costs about 25 cents. Customers can also buy coffee for about 50 cents.
Joining the co-op was a pivotal point for Adam and the business she wanted to launch: The co-op provided her with a license so she could secure the space she needed to run her tea service. It also offered her the requisite health training.
"It's good to be a member," says Adam. "If you are working alone it's difficult to have a license."
Divorced and the mother of six children for whom she has sole responsibility, Adam is using the proceeds from her tea business to buy food for them and to send some of them to school.
"They have learned a lot," says Mohamed of the women in the co-op. "You can see the progress in everything—in their style, in their home, in their children, in their interaction."
]]>Shito Massele, a 30-year-old mother of four, sits outside, her back against the warehouse wall. She is one of 96 members of the Qubse cooperative, a cereal bank run by women and funded by Oxfam. In a community where women previously were not consulted on business decisions, today they are ensuring economic and food security for themselves and their families. In fact, their work will turn a profit, generating additional income for their village.
"Before, the women were not even supposed to come near the scale," Shito says. "Now we can weigh things ourselves, our own grain." On this property, the women are not just weighing the grain; they are also fixing the price and deciding when and where to sell it. The land is theirs as well, donated by the village administration.
The cereal bank began nine months ago, with help from Oxfam America and OSRA and the encouragement of the village administration. Given a warehouse and seed money, the cooperative now controls the purchase, storage, and sale of grain.
In Oromiya region, where the project is based, having control of these basic factors has a huge impact. Before the cooperative was established, farmers were forced to sell most of their crops immediately after harvest to settle loans and taxes. During the rainy season, grain was scarce and prices rose. To feed their families, farmers were forced to take out more loans at high interest rates—sometimes simply to buy back their own crops, continuing the cycle of poverty.
The new cereal bank has enabled the community to store some of its harvest, setting grain aside for sale during the rainy season when the market price is high. The women thereby make a profit and ensure food stability for the next planting season.
The cereal bank's organizers stipulated that each prospective member had to attend civic education classes focusing on women's rights. The combined impact of both the classes and the cereal bank has been enormous.
Following the training, attitudes toward traditional practices harmful to women have changed noticeably. Furthermore, the women have proved themselves just as capable of earning an income as men are, thereby gaining the respect of the entire community. Indeed, many farmers prefer to sell their grain to the cooperative because of its reputation for honesty; the women will not try to cheat the farmer.
Being valued in the community is new to the women, but hard work is not. Before the cereal bank, women had little power, according to 46-year-old Abebu Kebebe. She recites her daily activities in a monotone, as if it is a chant she is used to repeating:
"For us it is clear that men are not stronger than us. Early in the morning, I clean the house and take care of the animals, travel two hours to collect murky water, return, cook, take care of the children. It is the oldest burden. Nothing is as simple as it seems. We do a lot of work the whole day, but [the men] move oxen and plow for an afternoon and come home. They move the animals and consider they moved a mountain."
Now, however, the women make all decisions involving the cereal bank, and are able to control their finances and ensure their own economic security.
The success of the Qubse cooperative has not gone unnoticed in neighboring villages. Three kilometers away, another group of women approached OSRA and their village administration, asking if they too could start a similar project. Dirre Dame, 67, chairwoman of the new cooperative, says it began because "we were encouraged by the group, so we organized ourselves, inspired."
The new cooperative, Association Gura, has only been around for a month, but the impact on the women is already noticeable as they plan what to do with the eventual profits. This is the first time these women have had any economic power. In a village where the nearest school is a three-hour walk away, women see this is the beginning of change and a better life for their children.
Some of the changes may seem basic: food, clothes, education for their children. Other women have bigger dreams, hoping to invest in land or animals some day. Right now, however, they focus on meeting the basic necessities, including a secure source of food. They plan eventually to build a small health clinic with the profits, noting that many women die in childbirth because there is no clinic nearby.
Regatto Bedhasa, a 57-year-old mother of six, explains what empowering women to take control of their lives has meant to her community:
"This becomes a hope for us," she says. "We can change our life without having been educated, without knowledge, without experience. We can change our situation."
]]>In the camps for displaced people that stretch along Chad's border and across conflict-torn Darfur in western Sudan, the concept is hard to explain. In a world of want—where violence has forced more than two million people from their homes—how do you describe an abundance so great that it needs a cookbook loaded with directions to keep it all straight?
That experience helped define just one of the jarring truths about the global distribution of food that Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio explore in their new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. A grand photo essay 288 pages long, the book took the couple on a journey to 24 countries where they got to know 30 families and the intricacies of each family's weekly food consumption. Family recipes accompany every profile.
Brand names and plastic packaging proliferate on some of the pages, testament to the global reach of processed foods and beverages. But on other pages, seeds and raw grains sit in burlap sacks—some more empty than full. A few of those limp sacks belong to the Aboubakars: D'jimia Ishakh Souleymane, who is a widow, and her five children.
The lessons Menzel and D'Aluisio learned from their visits with the Aboubakars are hard to forget, and they hope that readers who consume the stories and pictures in their book won't forget them either.
"What we really wanted to do was help people who didn't have a clue understand what was going on in the rest of the world," said D'Aluisio. "It's important—especially for Americans."
For starters, consider the water situation at the Breidjing camp in Chad where the Aboubakars have now lived for more than a year and a half. Their home is a small tent on a sandy plain crowded with countless others just like it. Oxfam has been providing water to thousands of people in the camp. The minimum provision in emergency situations such as this is just shy of 4 gallons per person a day.
"Water is one of the biggest problems," said Menzel. "Thirty thousand people use a lot of water. There's a big difference between having a faucet and carrying water and standing in line for water."
When the Oxfam water truck arrives to fill an empty bladder—a storage device that looks like a giant water bed—the relief that ripples through the blocks of tents is palpable, added D'Aulisio.
"The water is so precious," she said. "I do not turn a faucet on without thinking of all those people."
D'Aulisio's relationship with her garden has also changed since visiting the Aboubakars. Now, she wastes nothing from it, preferring to invest whatever time it takes to can the extra fruits and vegetables it produces.
D'jimia works hard for the little bit of extra food she buys for her family. She earns about $1.35 a day toiling in the fields of nearby villagers—when she can get the work. She uses the money to buy fresh tomatoes or dried okra. But the bulk of her family's diet—three meals a day—consists of the aiysh she stirs up in a big black pot over a fire outside her tent.
Aid groups provide the rations for the roughly 30,000 people in the camp. The allotments are far from lavish, and amount to about 2,100 calories per day per person in the form of a cereal, such as sorghum or millet, and small scoops of pulses and a corn-soy blend. The rations also include small amounts of sugar and salt.
"Most of everyone looks like they're on the minimum amount of calories needed," said Menzel. The rationing system takes into account only the numbers of people in a family, not the size of their appetites or where they fall on the growth charts.
"If you've got a lot of teen-age boys, you've got some difficulty," added D'Aluisio, speaking from her own experience mothering hungry boys.
D'Aluisio and Menzel learned about some of the ins and outs of camp management during their three-night sojourn in a tent at the Oxfam compound outside of Breidjing.
"Staying in the compound was great," said D'Aluisio. "We got to hang out with the people who were there."
One of the things that became clear to the couple during their stay at Breidjing is how complex the business is of feeding, sheltering, and providing water and sanitation for tens of thousands of people in a remote, arid place.
"Most people who see it from the outside don't see the difficulty," said D'Aluisio of the logistics in just getting enough food to people. "Sometimes there is a disconnect between the giving and the getting, and that disconnect is infrastructure."
For example, the camp was giving food out every 15 days instead of every 30 days—which would have been half the work—because it didn't have enough on hand. Food reserves were far away, and there was no guarantee when new supplies would arrive.
The difficulty in stocking Breidjing—or any of the camps in Chad and Darfur where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese have lived in limbo since early 2003—is just the tip of a problem that affects millions of people around the world every day.
"Most hunger in the world is politics based," said D'Aluisio. "There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everybody. It's just warped in terms of who's getting the food and who already has the food. There needs to be more equality than there is."
]]>