Week 7: Eating Dust

Nowhere is a more literal understanding of “eating dust” realized than in semi-arid regions of Africa during the dry season. I would say that I’ve lost track of how much ground we’ve covered on dirt roads in the last few weeks, but that would be a lie. We’re pushing 700 kilometers, conservatively. The sensation of inhaling dust that is invisibly suspended in the air long after a car has vanished down a dirt road was immediately familiar and intolerable to my body. There is a satisfaction that comes at the end of the day when you can feel dust saturating your hair, itching at your eyelashes, and settling in your respiratory tract. It is a feeling of accomplishment—a great journey must have been completed to feel dusted like this. On the other hand, I have sinuses that regularly punish me, and they seized the opportunity of being filled with African dust to rebel. A stubborn cold set in after the first 500 kilometers. Thank goodness for the NyQuil I packed.

Traveling in many parts of Africa is at once a trial and a delight, and Ethiopia is no exception to this. I often find myself snorting involuntarily at some of the more amusing sights, but it is also exhausting and occasionally terrifying. For the most part, travel between major towns and cities can be done on a tarmacked road, which, in my experience, are typically in pretty good condition here, with intermittent patches of potholes the size of a small cow or short stretches of missing road. Arba Minch, the town which houses Mercy Corps’ last field office before you enter the districts where projects are implemented, is also the point at which the road quality begins to falter and eventually peter out entirely. 

The communities participating in the survey I’ve been administering are located as much as 6 hours’ drive from Arba Minch; as such, we were based in Konso for a couple weeks, a town about two hours south of Arba Minch that, according to my Bradt Guide, is at first look simply an over-developed intersection. From Konso, roads diverge toward the Kenya and South Sudan borders as well as further west into Ethiopia from the single roundabout intersection in the town. Unless you follow the main tourist route toward Omo National Park, which I have not, the roads out of Konso are some mixture of dirt and gravel. The Land Cruisers, which are an essential asset for anyone hoping to stray off the Google Maps-beaten track, can take these roads at 60 km/hour, although the drivers must frequently slow down to negotiate bits of road that have been washed out by the recent rainy season. Further out into the communities where we are working, however, the roads often become nearly or totally impassible. At one point, my program manager and I had to get out of the car and cross a seasonal river on foot—which truly wasn’t that big of a deal, but was fun—in order to reach a project site. In other instances, however, traveling 10 kilometers has taken upwards of 45 minutes as the driver slowly picks his way among gullies and potholes in the dirt road.

Land Cruisers are truly unsung heroes, and a huge accomplishment in Japanese engineering. When my family lived in Kenya, we had a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, featured on some History Channel show as a vehicle that is very nearly indestructible. The Hilux, which is driven widely here, does not have the unnervingly solid suspension of a Land Cruiser, so a long trip on a dirt road leaves one in desperate need of a chiropractor. The Land Cruisers, however, really put their pickup cousin to shame, creating a ride that feels effortless even when the roads seem quite dubious. I feel pretty spoiled getting to ride around in the vehicle I always wished we had in Kenya. I also feel rather smug when I see tourist caravans pull up in the newer Land Cruiser models, which resemble luxury SUVs in the US but which do not have the utilitarian power of the old white model that is ubiquitous amongst aid organizations. Ah those poor devils, they don’t know what a true driving adventure is like here. In all vehicles used for travel outside of major towns, manual transmission and four-wheel drive are a must, as is a mastery of how to use them appropriately. (More than once I’ve thanked heaven for Mercy Corps’ incredibly skilled and trustworthy drivers.) Another essential feature is the “Jesus” or “O.S.” (an unprintable exclamation one might use in a near-miss situation) bar, as my aunts call them. On some of the rougher roads, one must hold tight.

Technicalities of the roads and vehicles aside, there’s a lot to pay attention to when you’re driving in the field. Other vehicles aren’t of the greatest concern, although there are certainly some interesting and frightening encounters with them. Today on the road to Teltele, a town about 60 km from the Kenya border, we saw an overturned bus that had conveniently laid itself to rest across the road. The farmer whose land it had encroached on as it crashed had set up an impromptu toll booth, hoping to stop vehicles from passing around the erstwhile bus by stretching a piece of string between the bus and a small post. My team was absolutely livid at this. Most vehicles can be seen from a long way off, their dust rising in their wake. As they approach, everyone frantically rolls up the windows in order to avoid the eating of dust. On paved roads, the bajaj taxis—auto rickshaws called by their Indian brand name here—are of the most amusing annoyance. They are incredibly slow but do their utmost to take up as much of the road as possible. I have a strong feeling that the driving test for bajaj operators is not very rigorous. Further outside of the towns, and often in the middle of a downtown, livestock pose an enormous inconvenience. The communities where we work are for the most part pastoralists or agropastoralists, but even in Addis Ababa it’s not uncommon to find a goatherd crossing a major thoroughfare with his charges. In the more rural areas, the roads are of course the easiest way to move animals to grazing land or market, but the bleating beasts have no interest in sharing the road. Some are more responsive than others to car horns, but many will not move unless threated with the prospect of momentarily becoming a pancake.

Those responsible for the herds are often children who look to be about 10 years old. These children are one of the more entertaining features of a drive through this region. They are typically entirely unperturbed by the vehicles barreling towards them and their families’ most essential assets, preoccupied instead with eliciting a response from the car’s occupants. I fancy myself a bit tanner than when I arrived in Ethiopia—my right arm in particular has taken on some color from hanging out the car window all day. Even so, it’s absolutely no secret that I’m white. My appearance immediately elicits screeches of “Faranji!!”—“foreigner”—from these children, usually accompanied exclamations of “You! You! You!” and “Highland!”—a brand of bottled water in Ethiopia. These bottles are multi-purpose and highly coveted devices for these kids, and some of the staff I travel with will occasionally indulge them with an empty bottle, much to their delight. In order to convince the faranji—or, for that matter, any passing driver—to share a plastic bottle, these kids along the road perform a little dance that involves squatting and leaping up repeatedly and in quick succession, wobbling the knees with inhuman agility. This, more often than not, is what gives me a good chuckle.

What I have enjoyed most, perhaps, is the scenery on these drives. Southern Ethiopia is absolutely breathtaking—it is not only the incredibly diverse people, its flora and fauna, and grand landscape—it is the sum of all of these things, and more, which lend an ethereal and otherworldly feel to this region. From the Rift Valley and its escarpments to high plateaus and low arid semi-desert, from mountains jutting up beside the road to bright flashes of colorful succulent blossoms between the scrubby brush, from dik-diks and guinea fowl and baboons darting across the road to the world-famous terracing of the Konso farmers and the Borana pastoralists with their distinctive turbans—the sights of culture, animals, and geography are almost too much to take in. I probably started to irk my colleagues with the number of times I said, “Look how beautiful it all is!” But I can’t get over it. I watched Out of Africa the other night, and felt reassured that I’m not the only one whose camera cannot capture the true majesty and overwhelming expanse of the landscape and all that occupies it. Frequently Shime, my favorite driver, has seen me pull out my camera and slowed down so I can take a picture. But no matter how many times I try to pull this larger-than-life place into a tiny frame. I can’t do it, but how else can I try to convince everyone back home that I’m living in a place this beautiful?

I returned to Addis this afternoon with a feeling of grief that it might be a long time before I again ride those roads in that sturdy white truck and watch the wonders of this corner of the world go by.

The floor of the Rift Valley is a patchwork of agricultural land

Ye olde Lande Cruiser

Driving from Konso to Burji, SNNPR

Traffic jam, pastoralist-style.

Sometimes you have to cross a river on foot to get to the field site.

Riding in a bajaj, the motorized tricycle that plagues Ethiopian traffic.

Driving north from Arba Minch to Awassa, SNNPR.

Mountains and farmland in Teltele, SNNPR, about 60 km north of the Kenya border.

Dusty roads through Teltele, SNNPR, a semi-arid region populated by numerous pastoralist groups.

Wildlife sighting! Guinea fowl in Teltele, SNNPR.

Views of mountains in Teltele, SNNPR.

Pit stop.

Mountains EVERYWHERE!

 

The Konso people have been terracing their land for generations,
and the terraces have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Week 5: Work, work, work

Alright, wonk friends. This post is going to be highly nerdy, with my DC and IR friends in mind. It is also dedicated to Allison Shean and Esther Salazar, for being awesome MC ladies that have taught me so much about XLS coding, nerdy M&E shenanigans, and life over the past few months. Enjoy.

With four weeks of work under my belt here in Ethiopia, I think it’s high time I tell you all what it is exactly I’ve been up to. My title is “Learning and Knowledge Management Intern.” This title spans two major departments at Mercy Corps—Research and Learning and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (I’m learning SO MUCH!!).

The Research and Learning Department receives funding from a variety of sources to do research all over the world, sometimes directly linked to Mercy Corps programming, other times a bit more tangential, but always on issues at the forefront of international humanitarian assistance and development. When I joined the Policy & Advocacy team at Mercy Corps in January, Keith Proctor (who bridges the PA and Research departments) was wrapping up a fantastic research piece called “Youth and Consequences,” which sought to understand why it is that young people join extremist groups. It was exciting to get to see that piece in some of the late stages of production, as well as its rollout this spring. Our Director of Research and Learning, Jon Kurtz, did a wonderful piece of research here in Ethiopia a few years ago—it’s called “From Conflict to Coping,” and well worth the read. Allison Shean, a research officer who is based in DC and who’s been of invaluable assistance to me in preparing for this position, did a very cool report called “Rethinking Resilience” on gender and resilience in Africa’s Sahel—another fascinating piece that’s become ubiquitous in MC offices and an essential resource for resilience programming.

Mercy Corps received funding in 2012 to do a pair of studies in Uganda and Ethiopia that look at whether certain of our programs across a variety of topics contribute to household and community resilience (come to my presentation in DC this fall—I’ll go into more detail on this survey then). The Ethiopia baseline portion of the study was completed in 2013; I’m conducting the endline. The survey tool is one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to work on. It’s brought together so many themes from my first year of Georgetown classes, and the most interesting parts of my last two internships (again, see me in September for more detail). I’ve spent the last two months coding the survey into XLS (no small feat, if I dare say so myself). We’re now in the process of uploading it to a server and downloading it onto tablets, which we’ll use to administer the survey. My scope of work says I'm administering the survey, but I have the invaluable support of several Mercy Corps staffers I got to work with the last time I was in the south. I’m working with a team of four supervisors, each of whom will supervise a team of three enumerators, who are mostly university instructors. Tomorrow I start training them; then, they’ll go out into three different woredas (a large county-sized regional division) and visit households that were interviewed for the baseline survey in over 10 kebeles (very small village divisions). I’m then responsible for cleaning the data, checking it to make sure it’s all good quality, and preparing it for analysis by our technical consultants. This is the quantitative portion of the study; our supervisors will also be conducting semi-structured interviews with community members to add a narrative piece to the data. I’ll be helping to analyze and report on this data back in DC.

MEL at Mercy Corps is a bit different—while there is a headquarters MEL department and there are some organizational standards for MEL, project- and country-level staff are really essential for designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation plans for MC projects around the world. They are tasked with understanding the communities Mercy Corps serves, and therefore they have the best sense of how to identify entry points for impact and tracking that impact over time. If you’re less of a wonk and therefore not particularly familiar with the granting process of NGOs like Mercy Corps, this is the quick version: grant-making organizations, corporations, or agencies (here is USAID’s process, for example) will put out a solicitation (a “request for applications” or something like that) describing the sort of project they would like to fund, with detailed requirements for agencies applying. These agencies then assemble a proposal, and the grant-makers will decide which of the applicants has put forward the strongest project proposal, and award the grant accordingly. One of the application components is monitoring and evaluation (M&E), which describes how the agency will track its progress on the proposed project, and how it will report on its progress to the grant-makers. There are a bunch of tools used to monitor and evaluate projects; some combination of qualitative (surveys and interviews) and quantitative (LOTS of numbers tracking money, beneficiaries, milk, goats, you name it).

At the moment, the Mercy Corps Ethiopia office is in the process of launching a national-level M&E system that will allow all projects from here on out to use the same tools for data collection, making the M&E process much more streamlined. I’ve been supporting our national level team in finalizing various components of this new system. It’s very interesting to see what’s common across all projects—you have to be very clear about your problem statement, explaining why this project needs to be done; about your strategic objectives, which try to address the issue at hand; about who you’re trying to reach, and why they are the targeted beneficiaries, rather than someone else. What’s probably much more interesting than writing these M&E forms is seeing the answers come in…sadly I’ll be out of here by the time they start rolling in, but the standardized system will allow Mercy Corps Ethiopia to look at individual projects as well as the system as a whole and see whether  they’re meeting targets and how they're making change.

In addition to this broader, more technical aspect of M&E, I’m also getting to do an exciting, meaty piece of it in the field. I spent my second week in Ethiopia in “the field” following our CHELBI team around to several capacity-building workshops, visiting areas of land that have been rehabilitated through the program, and fording rivers to visit nurseries that produce trees for these rehabilitated areas and for peoples’ farms. Over the next few weeks I’m writing a series of case studies for the office at USAID that funds this program to look at some intricate aspects of the program—my favorite of these is the youth part. It was so fun and fascinating to sit with the kebele youth as they discussed climate change, their natural resource needs, and what they can do in their communities to ensure a bright future for themselves and their families.

Ok, I think I’ve gone on significantly longer than is really acceptable for a blog. I’m back in Arba Minch and super excited for the next three fieldwork weeks of training and data collection. I’ll try to keep Facebook filled with photo updates, and obviously keep an eye on Instagram too. The moment I stepped off the plane here I felt elated to be back, and I can’t wait for this survey process to finally begin.

Weekend 2: Into the Rift Valley

Arba Minch is a breathtakingly beautiful place. The flight in drops low over Lake Abaya, the reddish waters hiding its monstrous crocodiles of legendary size. In the near distance is shimmering-clear Lake Chamo (imagine a “ch” with an umlaut), separated from Abaya by “God’s bridge,” a ridge-like, thickly forested hill that seals off the two bodies of water from one another. Chamo reflects the escarpment that rises up to meet the mountains behind it. The city spreads out along the two lakes, divided also into two—the downtown Sikela and its sister Secha, which sits a couple miles up the hill. Behind the town the Guge Mountains ascend again into the clouds, saluting their cousins across the lakes.

It was up these mountains that we climbed, the Land Rover making light work of the rocky dirt road. Mules trotted down the road laden with cabbages, many of their tenders staring curiously while the animals frantically avoided the truck. As we drove, I felt breathless—the view of the lakes, the twin towns, and their mountain backdrop were too much to take in. And at the same time, the air felt so clean and fresh I couldn’t breathe it in fast enough.

I immediately fell in love with this place. I didn’t know how eager I’d been to escape Addis Ababa until I stepped off the plane in the teeny tiny Arba Minch airport, and I was accosted—as if by an old friend—by the bright humidity and luscious greenery. It is everything that Addis is not—clean, fresh, green, and wide open. The splendor of the landscape is almost too much to absorb. I am so much reminded of Nakuru; the vastness of the lakes, the neighboring escarpments, the town that’s just big enough—these parts of the Rift Valley are remarkably similar.

I spent the afternoon with Yisehak, the logistics and administrative guru of the Mercy Corps field office here. He showed me the town—the university with its model farm and irrigation system; the condominiums under construction; the banana and mango trees that carpet the landscape near the lakes; the rivers where auto-rickshaw drivers were bathing themselves and their vehicles; the Mercy

Corps office and its goat-neighbor that greeted me with enthusiastic bleats. Yisehak is from Arba Minch, and completed his education here; he says he loves this part of the country more than any other. At 7 or 8 pm, he told me, he loves to walk the hills and hear such peaceful silence—only the wind is audible. I asked how people get up into the mountains. There’s a road, he said—let me show you. That was when we climbed, passing the mules and their men coming down from the mountain’s homesteads. From the top, you could hear the laughter of people in town, shrieks of children playing in the valley. We stood for a long time.

We had dinner at the Paradise Lodge. It’s the nicest hotel in town, but out of budget for an NGO to put up its visiting staff. Half of the hotel has been closed off to the public, and it’s from that side that American men in fatigues saunter over to the restaurant. The US military has an air base here, tucked conveniently along side the airport that’s used once a day for flight to and from Addis. The military has bought out half the hotel for the duration of its time here. Ethiopia is solidly part of the Horn of Africa; use your imagination to figure out what the base is doing here. Anyway, dinner was wonderful. The rice and vegetables were probably once frozen, but I hardly noticed—the fish was fresh out of the lake, and it came to me still sizzling.

I’m under the mosquito net now; this part of the country has malarial tendencies. This net, perhaps, feels more like home than anything else. I’m tricking myself, like I did when I was 12, into believing the net is my princess bed—a canopy to keep me feeling safe and regal.

This place feels like Africa as I knew it. And it’s making me feel more homesick than ever.

Week 1: There's a tortoise in my back yard

I’m wrapping up my first week in the Mercy Corps office here in Addis, and it’s already been such an adventure! I want to rewind a bit and share what I’ve been up to since my arrival here.

I landed in Addis Ababa just as May was drawing to a close after two (unnecessarily frantic on my part) days at the Ethiopian Embassy in DC and 16 flight hours surrounded by small children. It’s been eight years since I lived in East Africa, and at that point in my life my mother, the queen of planning and organization, was in charge of flights, visas, and other expensive and complex logistical arrangements. This has been a great learning experience for me both in the process of planning a trip of this scale and practicing my yogic breathing when I get nervous about how things are going. See, I ended up here on time and everything went smoothly; nothing to worry about.

From the moment we touched down in Addis, so many memories and emotions started flooding back. Ethiopia is in many ways radically different from Kenya, which I love; but there were so many small things that reminded me of home, from the jaundiced airport lighting to the heavy smell of the highland air just before the rain starts. In the last week before I left, I was starting to get nervous about my ability to live on my own in Africa (i.e., sans superhuman mom), but the feeling that I’m not too far from home has helped a lot.

After a weekend spent adjusting my circadian rhythm—which has involved not only the time change but also the fact that it’s light for precisely 12 hours here—and having a lovely backyard BBQ with colleagues from Mercy Corps’ PRIME project, it was time to dive right into work.

The Mercy Corps Ethiopia team put together a scope of work that mandated a hit-the-ground-running start, and I’ve not been disappointed. This week has been filled with the normal orientation activities you would expect, but there has also been a lot of substantive work already.  My work is primarily related to monitoring and evaluation.  Mercy Corps, like most relief and development agencies, puts a lot of stock in making sure that its programs are meeting their goals, and to see where improvements can and should be made.

Big donor governments like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) often fund Mercy Corps projects, and these governmental agencies typically have specific reporting requirements for implementing organizations. The project I’m assigned to is called CHELBI (short for “Communities Helping their Environment and Land by Bridging Interests,” and a nod to the Chelbi watershed in which the project is located), and it deals primarily with natural resource management (NRM) in one of the most lush and diverse areas of the country—the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR).  It’s funded by USAID, and I’ll be working on two reports for the donors assessing the impact of these Mercy Corps NRM activities in that region. I’m hoping to head to Arba Minch, where the program is based, in the next week to start that research. While I’m enjoying Addis, I’m very excited to get out to the field!

I’ve come to realize that eating lunch at the restaurants around the office, in a neighborhood called Piazza, is significantly more affordable than packing a lunch…we’re not in Washington anymore, Toto! There’s a great restaurant just a couple minutes from the office that serves wonderful Ethiopian food (which, if you haven’t tried, is a MUST). Doro tibs (chicken sautéed with veggies in a typical Ethiopian sauce) and wat are two of my favorites—particularly mesir wat, a spicy lentil dish (that I could eat by the bucket) served with injera bread. Yesterday two of my Ethiopian colleagues brought me to Tomoca Coffee, a coffee shop that serves one of Ethiopia’s oldest and most famous brands of coffee. It was so good. It’s brewed much stronger than we weak Americans usually go for and served in a small glass. I opted for the mocha version with plenty of milk and sugar. It was life-changing.

At the end of the workday, I’ve been enjoying relaxing in the very lovely house and gardens of the Mercy Corps staff member who is hosting me. At the moment he’s in the field, so the house gets pretty quiet in the evenings…it’s just the tortoise and me. 

I’ve really enjoyed catching up over Skype with two of my fellow fellows who are on the same time zone as myself—Rachel is in Amman, Jordan, also interning for Mercy Corps, and Meredith* is in Nairobi, Kenya with Catholic Relief Services (check out their blogs!). It is so exciting to hear what they’ve been up to and share some of the challenges and rewards of venturing off on these wonderful and wild experiences. It’s a strange feeling when almost everyone you know is asleep for most of your day, so when I get G-chat messages from Rachel and Meredith checking in on me, I feel a bit closer to home. Thank goodness for the Internet!

I’m signing off for now, but my next post will have updates from the field!

*NB: Meredith has given consent to reference her in this blog only if I mention that her eyes look just as beautiful over Skype as they do in person.