Somali and Afar
We live in a small city and are lucky enough to get by with the shops and utilities on offer. Harar is an easy place to live and although we miss a lot from home, there is enough here to keep us happy and occupied. We are certainly better off than other volunteers placed in much smaller places, the situation for them is much harder and I certainly would not have been able to update this blog, occasionally eat western food or even take regular showers had I been placed somewhere else. For example Ethiopian water is off much more often than it is on, however in Harar we do get a burst every few days and our garden tank usually keeps us happy in-between. Some volunteers have reported having no water for several weeks recently! Having no running water for more than a day really sucks.
Even the volunteers in small towns and remote places usually have access to some civilisation and we are all placed within distance of communications and transport. There have been volunteers sent further out, however they are usually well informed and certainly hardcore individuals. Many Ethiopians don’t have access any of the comforts we would consider vital. Particularly there are two regions of Ethiopia which have not changed in thousands of years - Afar and Somali. The government here calls them emerging regions, although what they are emerging from and to is difficult to figure out.
These places are the Ethiopia which all of us would recognise complete with malnutrition children, emaciated animals, flat dry scrubland, dead trees with vultures on and about 15,000 flies per square metre. Just being near the edge of these places makes you squint looking out for advertisement makers talking about giving men fish for a day and asking for credit card numbers.
These are hard and dangerous places. Afar people are known for being tough and unforgiving. After the Italian occupation and the Second World War it was common for Afar peoples to remove the testicles of any white person they met. Plus being one of the hottest places on Earth with little water means any trip into Afar needs to be carefully planned. Recent deaths have occurred when cars break down and people run out of supplies getting help.
Somali is slightly different in that as well as having hot, dry conditions and scary people it also is disputed land and a highly militarised area. Bombings and kidnappings are regular enough that the only westerners there are attached to the UN and the only transport is either military or UN vehicles (UN cars are so cool, you see loads of them in Ethiopia. When I get back home I might buy a white car and make my own).
The whole reason Somali is unstable though is because as soon as it was granted independence, Somalia attempted to annex Somali (a big chunk of Ethiopia), the top section of Kenya and Djibouti at pretty much the same time and was met with such resounding failure that the country still has not recovered. However it still lays claim to these lands and gives rise to further terrorism in all four countries.
At the moment myself and Jen are the closest VSO volunteers to Somali and we are forbidden by VSO to go any closer (although the regional capital of Somali is only an hour away and apparently quite safe). I doubt we will be exploring very much of it. Same goes for Afar which is a very difficult place to travel. Which is a shame though, as it does have some fantastic volcanoes and geology and it would be cool to travel in one of the hottest places on Earth (daytime temperatures of 50c are the norm). Plus I do quite like my testicles.
It was Afar that was hit most during the famines during the 80’s and the people there are still only ever one season away from famine again. There is so little there in terms of natural wealth that I personally can’t see that changing for a long time to come. It’s a huge problem for Ethiopia being an area that requires huge support and generates nothing in return.
Wow, a whole blog post and I didn’t use the ‘D’ word once!