A young woman washes her plastic shoe at a water tap from an Oxfam-funded project. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

As Oxfam continues our response to the floods in Pakistan, Coco McCabe is visiting Oxfam America’s projects in Ethiopia, where recurring droughts, conflicts, and soaring food prices continue to burden many families. Here’s her latest update from her journey.

 I’m in Ethiopia and I’ve decided to go shoe shopping—a chore that’s always a nightmare at home where there’s a shoe for every step: approach shoes, walking shoes, running shoes, dress shoes. I don’t want any of that stuff. I just want something that’s going to do the job for me here. Something sturdy and mud-worthy.

So here, in Agere Maryam, a few hour’s drive from the Kenyan border, I’ve decided to follow the lead of the local herders and go for plastic—all purpose, one-piece plastic. No glue. No stitching. No doodads. There are heaps of molded shoes for sale here—blue, brown, black, green—piled on tarps by roadside kiosks or offered in mounds in the nearby market.

But the abundance belies the reality: many people in the fields and pastures between here and the market in Finchawa go barefoot. Shoes, when people spend the money on them, are worn to shreds. And function always trumps fashion. In the market, I spy a boy darting through the crowd. On his right foot he wears a lady’s shoe—blue or black I can’t tell through the dust that covers it—and for his left foot he has found a man’s leather shoe, camel-brown and pointy. Its laces are long gone.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just got back from my first trip to Africa, where I learned how Oxfam and our partners are helping people overcome drought in southern Ethiopia. This post continues a series of blogs that I wrote along the way.

Today we drove to the place at the end of the road.

I’d tell you where we were, but I don’t know exactly. Somewhere in the Liben region of southern Ethiopia. But when I pull out the creased, dusty map to locate myself, I find only white space, the blank territory of the most remote place I’ve ever experienced.

I’d tell you the name of the road, but it doesn’t have one; those who live here just call it “the road”. The vision of community leaders, this road was hand-built by local people with support from Oxfam’s partner the Liben Pastoralist Development Association. Now that it exists, the 600 households in Malka Haloye—a remote community long cut off by its sheer distance across difficult terrain—can access services like schools, markets, and medical care.

Even in our Land Rover, it took two hours to travel these 45 kilometers. The drought-stricken landscape made me think of Mars, or maybe the moon:  red earth, gray stones, and the bent filaments of bare white trees. A choking hot dust swirled through the air, even with the windows rolled tight shut. Dry branches scraped the edges of the car with a snapping sound like breaking bones.

And the bouncing… let’s just say this road isn’t for those prone to motion sickness, as you can see from the above video.

But just when you think the road can’t get any steeper, or the terrain any more forbidding, you arrive at Malka Haloye. It’s a cluster of plowed fields and small earth huts along the banks of the Dawa River, surrounded by leafy trees that draw an unexpected stripe of green across the harsh terrain. As we pulled over at last, I realized this was the first time all day that I’d seen living, flowing water.

It was a welcome sight. And it reminded me that, for those 600 households, this place is home—even if it’s a long road to get here.

I just got back from an incredible first trip to Africa, where Oxfam and our partners are helping people overcome drought in southern Ethiopia. This post continues a series of blogs that I wrote along the way.

This morning I sat in on a great interview with Terefua Bagajo, one of the data collectors for Oxfam’s drought early warning system (DEWS). I was happy to hear her say that DEWS  is not only helping local people predict and prepare for droughts, but also improving women’s standing in the community.  “Women speak more now, and women are listened to in meetings,” she said.

Borena women from Gutu Dobi.

Although, after meeting Terefua—and many other confident, charismatic Borena women—I wonder how anyone could not respect what they have to say.

Women, even young girls, do a lot of the heavy lifting here. They care for children, prepare food, and walk for miles to collect each day’s drinking water.

And with the last three years’ decrease in rainfall, times are not easy for them and their families. There’s sometimes only enough food for one meal a day. The dried-up corn withers away in the fields. The majestic, humped Borena cattle, which traditionally form the wealth of the people, are growing skinnier by the day. But the women carry on, undaunted by obstacles beyond anything I’ve ever had to face.

And despite what we’d consider a lack of material comforts, this is also a place of real beauty, where people take pride in their culture and their community.

Women and girls glimmer with elaborate jewelry and patterned shawls that bloom, flower-bright, against the washed-out blue sky. Traditional incense perfumes the warm air with a sweet-smoky scent. Recently, people started painting their earth-walled houses in colors made of clay—brick red, dove-gray, soft pink—trying to outdo each other with graceful, swirling patterns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Of course, Moyale isn’t exactly the glamorous place that comes to mind when you think of a film shoot. The town seems to have only one street, our hotel is only a “hotel” in the loosest sense of the word (in that it’s a building with a roof and beds inside), and while we have electricity and running water, we rarely get both at the same time. (You haven’t really woken up until you’ve taken a cold, trickly shower at 5 am, lit only by the pale blue glow of a headlamp.) So far, the highlight of our stay was the night my colleague Selome convinced the hotel restaurant to make something approximating French fries. 

But it’s worth it when Oxfam staffers, film crew, partners, and equipment load ourselves into three trucks for the hour-long drive to the Borena communities where we’re filming our story. This morning, Alan (the producer) and Milton (the cameraman) even strapped themselves and their camera to the top of their truck as it sped along the bumpy dirt roads—ostensibly they wanted to capture the unique landscape as background footage (or b-roll) for the film, but I also think they enjoyed the adrenaline rush.

To give you a glimpse of what the film shoot really looks like, check out a short “behind the scenes” clip that I shot today on my hand-held camera. As you can see, we often attracted a pretty big audience:

Read my next blog from the trip.

Right now, my world is neat and orderly. From the office to the gym to my apartment, from my favorite restaurants to the streets of my neighborhood, most of my day-to-day life is enclosed by places I know well. Places where I feel comfortable.

But starting with a 14-hour-long flight later this week—and culminating in a 10-day journey along the uneven roads of southern Ethiopia—life is about to get uncomfortable in a big hurry.

I’m about to go beyond anything I’ve ever done before. And that’s both scary and exciting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ethiopian children play in the village of Gutu Dobi where some members of the community were surviving on just one meal a day. Photo by Sarah Livingston/Oxfam America

Months in the making, a story-gathering trip to Ethiopia that I’ve been planning is finally coming together. I fly out on Thursday. I’ll be visiting with farmers, often rain-parched, in the far north and herders in the south who have been struggling to overcome a drought and food crisis that left 13.5 million Ethiopians dependent on aid for survival last year. That’s close to 18 percent of the entire country of 77 million people. And news is now trickling in that the UN has just allocated $6 million from an emergency fund to address a new spike in hunger that could leave 6.2 million Ethiopians needing food aid in the coming weeks. Poor rains from mid-February to mid-May are part of the problem. Read the rest of this entry »