The Green Desert
Trip Start
Oct 11, 2008
1
17
64
Trip End
Feb 20, 2009
Awassa, Ethiopia
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
What is drought? It's not a simple definition in the so called arid and semi arid lands (ASAL). A few months ago the area between Marsabit and Moyale was affected by a severe drought and different organizations were trying to put programs in place to assist the Borana pastoralists and there was even talk of famine if the rains would fail. Well, the rains didn't fail and it had been raining for 3 weeks in Marsabit when we passed through. It was an amazing sight, the desert had turned green, there were flowers everywhere and there was plenty of grass for the camels, cattle, sheep and goats as well as for the wild animals that inhabit this area.
For the nomadic pastoralists drought is a normal phenomena, it's just a dry phase in the climatic pattern, which recurs throughout their lifetime. Since time immemorial they have observed and learned strategies for coping with drought. They have livestock which can, to a certain extent, cope with the shortages accompanying reduced rainfall and so minimize its effect. However, there is an increasing belief among climatologists that, with global warming, droughts will become harsher and floods more intense while overall their frequency will increase.
This will cause a harder existence for pastoralists, as they will not have
enough time between droughts to recover the losses sustained earlier. Sheep and goats
are most affected by climatic extremes, but also breed and recover the fastest. Cattle are very vulnerable to drought due to overstocking and overgrazing near water supplies (which happens when pastoralists are forced to settle). Cattle numbers do not always recover in the wetter years. Camels are least affected by drought, but more vulnerable to disease, when flooding occurs. However, camels are still the best option in these arid lands because they don't trample the vegetation as sheep and goats do. We saw hundreds of camels walking through the famous Dida Galgalu desert, a beautiful sight.
We finally arrived in Moyale and set up camp at the KWS campsite. Moyale is a real border town, Somali, Borana, Kiswahili, Amharic and English are spoken and both Kenyan Shillings and Ethiopian Birr are accepted. Here we had to do some jua kali repairs to the truck because a support to the steering wheel broke along the terrible road (didn't affect the steering itself but we still needed some hose clamps to keep everything in place) Robert is becoming quite a mechanic....
The border crossing was very straight forward passports stamped out in Kenya and we already had our visas for Ethiopia. The truck posed no problems thanks to the "carnet de passage en douane". We were all done in 1.30 hours and decided to drive to Yabello, 200 km to the north (famous for bird watching, because of two endemic species: Streseman's bush crow and White-tailed swallow) The first one we had already seen 3 years ago and instead of the swallow, Robert could now add another new species (Shelley's Starling) to his Ethiopia list.
The road from Moyale to Yabello is tarmac and runs through beautiful scenery, acacia woodland with hundreds of tall termite hills, changing in color from white to red dependent on the color of the soil. We arrived in Yabello just when it was getting dark and could not get a room at the Motel, it was full of tourists (Dutch Baobab group, German, British) so we pitched our tents and had our first Ethiopian meal (Tibs, fried bits of lamb ) and some very good Bedele special, our favorite Ethiopian beer.
The nest morning we continued towards Addis Ababa, planning to stop in Lake Awassa. The road had deteriorated since we passed there 3 years ago, obvious lack of maintenance, which is a continuous curse throughout Africa. Human populations have increased, which is most evident in Ethiopia where deforestation is taking an enormous toll. We could even see the difference since we passed through the same Isiolo, Moyale, Awassa road 3 years ago. When vegetation is removed, pasture is lost and soils exposed to erosion, with irreversible consequences. Drought is a fact of life among these pastoral communities. Preventing it manifesting itself as famine ultimately means empowering the communities in arid lands through education and livelihood programs and allowing them to play a productive role in national economies and this can only be done if both children and adults have access to relevant and appropriate education. (This is of course part of the work I have been doing for many years (starting with UNICEF, van Leer and until recently Save the Children). The enrolment rate in formal schools for pastoralist and nomadic children is usually under half the national Gross Enrolment Rates - and in several cases less than 10%. Most projects focus on getting nomads and pastoralists to 'fit' into the formal system, rather than designing a new educational 'fit' for pastoralists. As a consequence millions of nomadic and pastoralist children throughout the world remain beyond mainstream provision. There are however a number of successful programs that have shown innovative approaches to reach nomadic pastoralist children such as LEAP in Ethiopia, Samburu Loipi in Kenya and ABEK in Uganda.
So now we are in Awassa, staying at what we knew as the Wabe Shebele 2 hotel on the lakeshore and the monkeys are climbing on the truck. The hotel has been bought by Midrock and they plan to make it into an even more luxurious hotel than the Sheraton in Addis! Apparently Haile Gebre Selassie has also build a hotel on the lakeside but I don't think it's open yet. Awassa town has grown enormously and is also an important administrative centre as the capital of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' region (must have been a compromise title!). This region was only formed in 1994 when 5 ethnically and linguistically diverse areas including Sidamo came together as one region. Awassa lies 275 km from Addis and 25 km from the Rastafarian town of Shashemene.
