Post on 23-Feb-2016
description
Few residents of Boto, a farming village in the high-
lands of southwestern Ethiopia, have traveled farther
than their feet can carry them. But their coffee circles
the globe.
For more than a thousand years, coffee has grown wild
in this lush corner of Ethiopia, under a thick forest
canopy of acacia and other indigenous trees. Coffee is
Ethiopia’s biggest export and, for Boto, a lifeblood. In
a village where kerosene lanterns still light the night
and children walk dirt paths to fetch water each day,
the annual coffee harvest spells ballast or bounty.
In this inspiring book, the youth of Boto bring us
inside their village, with photographs and stories they
gathered themselves. They have much to say, about the
importance of family, community, education, and faith.
They have much to teach, about resilience and dreams
in the face of breathtaking hardship.
next generation press
In Our VillageBoto, Ethiopia Through the Eyes of Its Youth
Edited by Barbara Cervone
stories and photos from a coffee-growing village
Edited by Barbara Cervone
In Our VillageBoto, Ethiopia Through the Eyes of Its Youth
stories and photos from a coffee-growing village
This book is dedicated
to the youth of Boto,
whose words and images
fill these pages
abduselam abamechaalfia abadirhawi bedru
jemila abajihadmuhidin ahmed
seid kemerseifu teib
zelika abamecha
Preface 1
The boto tree 7
Wild and settled 11
Counting hard assets 15
Family necessities 19
Hastening to prayer 23
Ballast or bounty 27
One with livestock 31
Duromina 35
Wattle and daub 39
Injera and wat 43
Satisfaction, conversation, and blessing 47
Market day 51
Head to toe 55
Child’s work, child’s play 59
Storytelling 63
In sickness and health 67
Education, poverty, and wealth 71
Hope in the unseen 75
Map 78
Fast facts 79
More about Ethiopia 82
Acknowledgments 88
Copyright © 2011 by What Kids Can Do, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in Hong Kong by Great Wall Printing, Ltd.
Distributed by Next Generation Press
ISBN: 978-0-9815595-6-8
CIP data available.
Design assistance by Sandra Delany.
Next Generation Press, a not-for-profit book publisher, brings forward the
voices and vision of adolescents on their own lives, learning, and work.
With a particular focus on youth without economic privilege, Next Generation
Press raises awareness of young people as a powerful force for social justice.
Next Generation Press, P.O. Box 603252, Providence, Rhode Island 02906 U.S.A.
www.nextgenerationpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Before there was a village here – before there was even the idea of a village –
there was a clearing in the forest, and in that clearing stood a single boto
tree. The tree was tall and straight. Its branches lifted the sky and its roots
anchored the soil.
Two brothers, Aba Garo and Aba Labu, squatted one day to rest in the shade
of the boto. It was Meyazya 1926 (April 1933, by the Ethiopian calendar)
and the long rains were weeks away. Still, enough pasture remained for the
brothers’ two black mares to graze, and a nearby river carried cool water
down from the mountains.
A week later, the two brothers returned to the tree. This time, they brought
with them twenty sheep, six oxen, four cows, and eighteen sacks of grain.
The children of Aba Garo and Aba Labu had already carried the message
off in every direction: next Saturday, a market would take place where the
boto stood.
When that day came, farmers arrived early in the morning, their mules
laden with gourds of honey, woven baskets, cotton garbs, and bags of barley,
teff, maize, and coffee. Traders pushed their small carts from the town of
Agaro, bringing cooking pans, lanterns, and other goods to sell. Women
carried baskets of vegetables on their heads and infants on their backs as they
walked to the market. Many wore three layers on the journey, to sell the
extra clothes.
7
The boto tree
98
People spread their wares on the ground below the boto tree and hung their
extra garments on its limbs to announce the start of the market. All morning,
the buyers and sellers haggled with each other.
By noontime, smoke and aromas filled the air. Those who had made a prof-
itable sale celebrated over grilled meat. Women burned incense and roasted
and boiled coffee. Their customers sat on wooden stools, sipping the hot
black liquid from clay cups.
When the sky turned orange above the boto tree, men, women, and children
loaded their belongings onto their mules, their backs, and their heads for the
journey home. Aba Garo and Aba Labu counted their coins and livestock.
They had done well that day.
From then on, every fortnight, the market under the boto drew followers
seeking profit or trade or communion – or all three. A textile weaver and a
hide trader joined Aba Garo and Aba Labu as the leaders of the market.
Families started building houses and planting crops on the land stretching
outward from the tree. In time, an officer visited from the district govern-
ment and agreed to register the growing settlement as a kebele. The officer
entered the new village’s name into the records: “B-o-t-o.”
As you can see from how brightly it shines from space at night, Japan is one of
the most urbanized countries in the world.
1110
Green, fertile, alive. In southwestern Ethiopia, hills and valleys roll into each
other. Wild forests compete with cultivated fields; the red ochre soil turns
hard when arid, sticky when soaked. The land drops to the grasslands of
Sudan in the west and to the deserts of Afar in the east. Lakes carve into the
landscape in the south; in the north, the Simien Mountains rise more than
4,000 meters high. Here in Boto, however, the environment feels intimate.
We grow up learning the names of trees, as if they were members of our
family. Give us a minute and we can list two dozen trees (in Afan Oromo,
our language): reji, cheledema, togo, wallago, ebicha, bekenisa, qobo, kerero, kiltu,
wadesa, hambesa, harbu, botoro, badessa, abayi, sombo, birbisa, ejera, cheka,
qorasuma, ulumayi, walenso, hadami, baya.
We wash our clothes on smooth stones, in the tea-brown streams where
we swim and bathe. We know the names of every stream, too: Gema, Naso,
Yembero, Alaltu, Mesa, Dogaja, Dumo, Chami.
With over 150 types of butterflies, our task of naming them gets harder.
Still, we have memorized many, like the “flying handkerchief” with its lacy,
sculpted wings of pale yellow, tan, and silver. The birds we know by their
calls: “haa-haa-haa-haa,” “a di-dii,” “wreeeee-creeuw-wreeeee-creeliw.”
Wild and settled
12
Mischievous baboons try to steal
our food, and the stoic black and
white Colobus monkeys perch in
our trees above our coffee farms.
Leopards grow fewer in number
every year, but every now and then
one will take a sheep. We have
more success guarding our crops
from wild pigs, but they are quick
to anger and challenge us back.
This wildness has formed us. Yet
now we push against the wildness,
as we expand our settlements and
our planting fields. Decades ago,
wild coffee trees shaded by tall
tropical forests covered our region.
Now, cultivated crops are taking their place, and it is up to humans, not na-
ture, to replenish the soil. Streams have dropped that once ran high except
in the driest months; our need for water has increased but the rains have
not. The butterflies are falling, both in number and color.
To name our land we use a new word now: “sustainable.”
14
Suleman Abamilki, Boto’s agricultural development agent, checks the vil-
lage register for the latest census figures. The annual head count includes
humans, livestock, and hectares. In a village with homesteads spread over
five kilometers, collecting these numbers takes days of walking.
Here is what Suleman and the other census takers found in 2010. Humans:
10,109 men, women, and children in 1,657 households. Livestock: 2,179
cows, 1,945 sheep, 1,952 chickens, 468 horses, 337 goats, 116 mules, and 12
donkeys. Hectares: 772.5 for crops, 728 for coffee, 387 for housing and
gardens, 210 for forest, 164.5 for cattle grazing, and 34 for growing the plant
called chat.
The dirt road leading in and out of Boto, forty-five minutes from the nearest
paved road, carries mostly foot traffic (people and animals) and rarely motor
vehicles. Enter Boto by four-wheel drive and you could miss the town center
if you closed your eyes, counted to one hundred, and kept going.
Stop and get out and you may find the village restaurant, which seats eight,
packed with men sipping their second cup of buna (Ethiopian coffee) and
wrapping injera (Ethiopian bread) around a spicy wat (stew) of lentils. The
infirmary across from the restaurant will likely be closed; with little equip-
ment or medicine, it draws few patients. If you are a ferengi (foreigner) and
look back from the infirmary’s locked door, you may find it difficult to sort
Counting hard assets
15
16 17
the shops from the houses,
all with tin roofs and strung
together in facing rows.
Up the road, several mer-
chants look out from their
stalls. Kedija specializes in
bottled orange drink and
matches, scissors and razors,
socks and flashlights.
Abdurahiman stocks the ne-
cessities – exercise books for
taking notes at school, soap
and razor blades, cooking in-
gredients, water jugs – along
with the extras, like radios.
Tahir sells kerosene for our lanterns, since Boto has no electricity.
For much of his life the tailor, Taha, has been making clothes on a 1952
foot-powered sewing machine in a shop two meters wide. Many mornings,
his three-year-old great grandson traces patterns with a stick on the shop’s
dirt floor.
Always the busiest spot in
town, the chat market draws
buyers, sellers, and on-the-
spot users who chew the fresh
leaves of this shrub – stimu-
lating but addictive – and pass
the afternoon. Goats, sheep,
and dogs join in. The chat
leaves give them a kick, too,
and no one seems to mind if
they snatch a share.
As the sun descends, a dozen
women, ages fifteen to sixty-
three, occupy a patch of
ground just as the road leaves
Boto. Each displays and sells
the excess from her family’s
garden: perhaps a dozen
tomatoes, mangoes piled in
a basket, coffee beans spread
on a small cloth.
Satisfaction, conversation, and blessing
The mother pours her coffee, dips a finger in the warm liquid, and puts it in
her toddler’s mouth to suck. We grow up sipping coffee, several times a day,
for company as much as pleasure.
You may have heard about the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, a tradition hun-
dreds of years old. Buna zigijit joins families and neighbors in stories, gossip,
debates, and friendship. This is how it looks.
Liya, the oldest daughter of Fatuma and Mohammed, spreads fresh long
grasses across the floor and lights the nearby incense burner. She fills a jebena
(a round-bottomed, black clay coffeepot) with water and places it over hot
coals. Today it is her turn to prepare the hour-long coffee ceremony for her
family and neighbors.
She tosses a handful of green coffee beans into a heated, long-handled pan,
then shakes the beans over a fire until they are clean. With the same pan, she
roasts the beans, stirring them constantly. Unlike her mother, who removes
the beans from the heat when they turn medium brown, Liya roasts them
until they are blackened and shimmering with oils. She walks the pan around
the room, sending wafts of roasted coffee in every direction and letting each
guest breathe in its sweet aroma.
4746
49
Liya then reaches for a small, heavy wooden bowl, called a mukecha, and
a wooden pestle, a zenezena. She transfers the beans to the mukecha and
grinds them until they are a fine powder. Soon, the water in the jebena is
ready. She removes the jebena’s straw lid and adds the fresh coffee. She
brings the mixture to a boil again, then removes it from the heat.
On the floor next to a kerosene lamp lies a tray with ten small, porcelain
handle-less cups, arranged so that each cup touches the next. Liya bends over
the tray and pours the coffee in a single stream from about twelve centimeters
above, one cup to the next. Liya is good at this and she rarely breaks the stream.
She also knows when to stop pouring, so that the grounds at the bottom of
the jebena do not end up in the cup. She picks up the tray and carries it from
one person to the next, handing each a cup of hot buna.
Fatuma praises Liya’s coffee and skill, as do the others. Tradition requires
this exchange, but in Liya’s case, the compliments go beyond the customary.
Mohammed adds salt to his coffee. Aysha adds niter kebbeh, our spicy butter.
When Jemal had stomach pains a week ago, he added the herb talatam,
known to ease indigestion. Liya’s younger brothers and sister ask for sugar.
Stories and gossip flow freely between sips.
After the first round of coffee, Liya prepares two more—three in all. The
first is abol, for satisfaction, the second is, tona, for good conversation, and
the third is baraka, a blessing. Each serving is weaker than the one before,
but each cup is said to transform the spirit.
48
Until 2006, education in Boto ended at grade four. That year, the primary
school added another grade, and one more each year since. We now have
eight full grades, a complete primary school in the Ethiopian education
system. Across the country, the number of students enrolled in school has
risen like a bumper harvest, five hundred percent in twenty years, they say.
More children attending more school – we should be glad. We are. But it’s
a mixed blessing, to tell the truth. Having grades four through eight creates
an opportunity for us to go on to secondary education: two years of level
one and perhaps two years of level two. But to do so, we must leave our village
and pay fees that few of our families can afford. After grade ten, we could
teach primary school. After grade twelve, we have the chance – small, to be
sure – to go on to university. More education means more possibilities, this
we know. But poverty still gets in the way.
The conditions in our village school, never good, have grown worse. Bulcha
Albamilki, whose parents never attended school, teaches grades one
through six. He has this to say:
With 1,000 students and thirteen teachers, the classrooms are too full. It is better now
that the younger students come in the morning and the older in the afternoon, but that
reduces the education by half for each group. There are not enough tables, not enough
chairs, and no desks. Students who live near the school sometimes bring their own
Education, poverty, and wealth
7170
73
chairs. In the dry season, we spread
outdoors, with the teacher and students
grouped around a blackboard that
leans against a tree or classroom wall.
Seid picks up where Bulcha
leaves off:
We lack books, we lack laboratory
materials, we lack community support.
The roof leaks and, without proper
fencing, the animals come in. We
speak Oromiffa, the language of our region, but the few books we have are in Amharic
or English. We get discouraged. The 150 students who enter the first grade drop to
48 in the eighth.
Despite these challenges, many of us study as hard as we can, borrowing
time from daily chores to do “maths” and answer our teachers’ questions,
copied down from worn blackboards. “What countries border Ethiopia?”
“What planets revolve around the sun?” “How many meters are there in
twenty kilometers?” “What gases cause global warming?”
A sign in our school, handwritten on a piece of fabric, reads, “Education is
wealth.” May we be wealthier than our parents, we say as one, and may our
children be wealthier still.
72
Location: The Horn of Africa, bordered on the north and northeast by
Eritrea, on the east by Djibouti and Somalia, on the south by Kenya, and
on the west and southwest by Sudan
Area: 1.12 million square kilometers (437,794 square miles)
Population: 82,000,000 (2010 estimate); 13th in the world*
Population growth rate: 3.19 percent (2011 estimate); 8th in the world*
Capital: Addis Ababa
Climate: Tropical monsoon; wide variations induced by topographic factors
Terrain: High plateau with a central mountain range divided by the Great
Rift Valley. Lowest point: Danakil Depression at minus 125 meters (minus
400 feet). Highest point: Ras Dashen at 4,533 meters (14,872 feet)
Major languages: Amharic (official), 33 percent; Afan Oromo (official
regional), 32 percent; English (official language taught in secondary and
higher education), 15 percent
Major religions: Orthodox, 43 percent; Muslim, 34 percent; Protestant,
19 percent
Fast Facts on Ethiopia
7978
Ethiopiacourtesy of mapsof.net
Literacy: 62 percent of males age 15 and over can read and write; 39 percent
of females (2008)
Education expenditures: 5.5 percent of GDP (2007); 42nd in the world*
Drinking water source: Improved, 38 percent of population; unimproved,
62 percent
Sanitation facility access: Improved, 12 percent of population; unimproved,
88 percent
Roads: 36,469 km (22,600 mi); 24 percent paved, 76 percent unpaved
Mobile phone users: 5 per 100 persons (2010)
Internet users: 0.4 per 100 people (2008)
Sources: CIA World Factbook, United Nations Human Development Report, World Bank
* These (approximate) rankings are from the CIA World Factbook.
Note: According to the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI), Ethiopia ranks 157th out of the 169 countries that were part of the 2010 HDI. The index measures a country’s averageachievements in three basic aspects of human development: health, knowledge, and income. Intro-duced in 1990, the HDI is an alternative to conventional measures of national development, such as level of income and the rate of economic growth. It emphasizes that people and their capabilitiesshould be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growthalone. In the case of Ethiopia, the HDI underscores how much more needs to occur in Ethiopia with respect to reducing poverty, improving health, and increasing literacy.
81
Government: Federal republic
Monetary unit: Birr (approximately 17 birr = 1 USD)
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth: 8 percent (2010 estimate); 19th in
the world*
GDP per capita: 1,009 USD (2010); 160th out of 172 countries
Main exports: Coffee, hides, oilseeds, beeswax, chat, and sugarcane; the
largest domestic livestock population in Africa; poised to become one of
the top flower exporters in the world
Natural resources: Small reserves of gold, platinum, copper, potash,
natural gas (unexploited), hydropower
Work force: Agriculture 80 percent; industry and commerce 20 percent
Urbanization: 17 percent of population (2010)
Arable land: 10 percent
Median age: 16.8 years
Total fertility rate: 6.02 children born per woman (2011 estimate); 7th in
the world*
Life expectancy at birth: 56.1 years (2010)
Infant mortality rate: 109 deaths per 1,000 live births (2008)
80