...No end in sight

By Sereke Berhan
July 18, 2006

Just when you were about to reach your mid-teen years, a severe drought hits your region. Rain gradually becomes scarce and everything you and your family worked for started to crumble. In the past, although your family was poor, there was enough food to last year round. You had chickens, cattle, sheep and goats to keep you going until the rains came even if the crops failed. You could sell your livestock or pawn a produce to get what you needed for that particular circumstance. Your neighbors, although in the same situation as your family, were always there for you if something unexpected happened. There was communal support for adverse situations when sporadic disasters affected families. Without government help or international intervention, society had its own built-in mechanism to cope. But this time it was different. The continuous neglect and impoverishment left much of the population vulnerable. A large-scale disaster became inevitable. It couldn't be hidden from the world or restrained without external support. The drought continued with no sign of relief. Resources saved for adverse conditions got to a dangerously low level. The land had nothing to offer as it was completely devoid of moisture. Its only product became dust along with the glare of the scorching sun. After many in your region perished in what became the world's worst famine, the international community reluctantly responded to your plight and a feeding center was set up in a town three days walking distance away from your home.

Your family had no choice but to leave the barren village in search of food. It was decided to take the long trek to the feeding center. With no food or enough water it was going to be a torturous journey. But it had to be done. There was no other choice. On the way, two of your younger sisters died of starvation. On one occasion, your neighbors buried eleven children and four young women in a mass grave. Many more died along the way in that tragic exodus. You still have the image in your head where some of the adults of your village struggled to break the ground to bury the dead. You still vividly see their emaciated arms hovering over their thin bodies trying to dig the bone-dry soil. You remember your mother's anguish and how distressed and hungry you all were. You and your surviving three brothers and three sisters, like the other children in the crowd were beginning to show signs of severe malnutrition halfway into the journey. Eventually, after loosing many in your group, you reached the center. The younger kids were immediately taken for intensive feeding and care. The older children, with their parents, were given food and settled in a makeshift village. You were saved, but the effect of this horrible experience lingered with you in the form of mental and physical distress, which you never recovered from.

Shortly after the disaster was made public, the imperial government was toppled and a group of military officers assumed power claiming to improve life for the masses. People were hopeful that they would be given a chance to lead a better life through the newly instituted land reform and administrative changes. But nothing came out of the transfer of power. Your new leaders spent most of their time talking about how to do things instead of doing what needed to be done. Brutal and forceful control became their rule and they stubbornly squandered the opportunity for positive change. To the dismay and constant anguish of the people, living conditions got worse. Life became even more rigorous than in the previous administration. Political cadres and secret agents who spread fear and mistrust among the population monitored every activity. The government incessantly meddled in people's affairs and tried to direct all aspects of life. This stifled creativity and the coping ability of the people driving them to extreme poverty.

After staying in the shelter for one year, receiving daily food rations for subsistence, your family was told that the rains have returned and you were asked to go back to the village. With no other choice, you packed your meager belongings and headed to your village. The Non Governmental Organization that supported the shelter gave you some money to help you resettle. You had to start from scratch but with communal cooperation, you were able to put a roof over your head. Your family made every effort to re-establish their shattered lives. Although production had largely diminished due to soil erosion and environmental degradation, you survived with the limited resources you could pull out of the earth. The family was crushed but not defeated. With sporadic rains and persistent outbreak of pest infestations you barely made it through the next five years. By now you have grown into a young man and have taken a bride. You have been blessed or cursed--depending on how others look at it--with two little children of your own whom you hoped to send to school. Your mother's health was failing and your father never seemed to revive from the effects of the drought. You had to take care of them and your surviving siblings. Because of this, you and your wife assumed more responsibility than you could handle, but you were optimistic. Just when you were hoping that the worst is over, before you even collected your energy to overcome another disaster, the rains started failing. For the next three consecutive years not a drop of rain was seen in your area. First livestock and other domestic animals started dying, and then followed the children and the elders. Your mother died of exhaustion after she made a long journey to fetch water from a well four hours away. Your wife who was three months pregnant with your third child had a miscarriage while she was out in the field collecting firewood, and she barely survived. She could hardly support herself let alone carry a fetus in her womb. Your two boys were beginning to show signs of malnutrition with their bellies distended and they were getting feeble by the day. You had high hopes for them but your dream of a better future started to get more and more remote as each day passed. They were beginning to perish in front of your eyes and there was nothing you could do to make things better for them.

Suddenly the call for able-bodied men to defend the motherland from secessionists and reactionary groups came from the military government. You were forcefully conscripted as a militiaman although you pleaded with the authorities that your father, your wife, children, brothers and sisters have no one else to support them. But to no avail. After a three-month training in a military camp you were shipped to a remote village in northern Ethiopia to fight with separatist insurgents in the civil war that raged for over thirty years.

Soon after you left for the war, the severe drought that started earlier turned into a disastrous famine. It became the second worst disaster in less than ten years and claimed the lives of more than one million people. You heard that your father died without putting up a fight. Your wife, brothers and sisters along with their families decided to walk to the nearest feeding center. It took them five days to get there, with nine children in tow. They all survived. Your wife stayed in that town and became a prostitute. She catered to the swelling relief and development aid community there and many admired her beauty although they didn't actually know or care about what she has been through. Your two children were separated from their mother as she was unable to take care of them and they were lured by the promise of a better life to the capital city. Predictably, fate turned its face against them as it does on many who come with a dream of a better life. They now beg on the streets of Addis Ababa as teenagers. They have turned to drugs and illicit activity to survive in the harsh streets of the city.

On the fifth year of continuous service at the war front, you were severely wounded in a fierce battle and your left foot was amputated. You were sent to recuperate for one year in a military rehabilitation center and released to fend for yourself. As one of the lucky ones--out of the many who lost limbs in the crazy war--you got the chance to be fitted with a prosthetic limb donated by one of the governments, which supplied both your government and the rebels with the weapons that facilitated your mutilation. Although your movement was limited and awkward you were able to move around without help.

Six years after you left your childhood village you went back only to find out that your wife and children were no longer there. Your three younger brothers and three sisters returned to the village after spending a couple of years at the feeding center with their families. They told you that they left your wife and the children at the feeding center. You trekked to that small town slowly dragging your artificial limb only to find out that your family has moved on. Most probably to the big city but nobody could tell you where exactly they were.

With nowhere to go and no other option, you decided to appeal to the military government for assistance. As a citizen who shed his blood for the motherland, you were given priority over others and your application was approved. You were sent to a resettlement village in the southwestern portion of the country. Your two sisters, three sisters-in-law and their seven children followed you. All your brothers and brothers-in- law were recruited for the endless war and headed to the front.

Although you were handicapped, you were able to make a living as a farmer in your new village for you and your extended family. It was a constant struggle with harsh conditions and malaria but you prevailed. Life was beginning to look good. You have now remarried with a new baby. Drought is not as threatening as it was in your old village. The land was relatively flat and the soil was fertile. Within a few years you started to prosper. You had enough food and some money. Although you were not rich you were not starving either. Sadly just as in the past, it was short lived.

A few years after you were resettled you heard the news that your two younger brothers and all of your brothers-in-law were killed in the war. Your only surviving brother came back from the war front mentally disturbed and lived in your old village for a while. He took a wife and had children. After sometime he started drifting aimlessly as he was severely affected by the war. He later abandoned his wife and two children and went to Addis Ababa to try his luck in the big city.

Following a protracted guerrilla struggle, which claimed many lives and stunted overall growth, the military government was overthrown by a band of rebels who vowed to lead the country towards democracy. In the beginning, people were relieved that the military dictator was removed and a general sense of euphoria gripped the nation. But the new government had its own agenda, which was significantly different from the peoples needs. Without any thought and foresight this newly formed government started fanning differences and divided the nation into ethnic based regions creating a huge turmoil displacing millions in the process. This situation created a general sense of insecurity and affected millions of lives around the country.

Consequently, as a newcomer to the southwest, you were regarded as an intruder and driven out of your new village. Your modest cottage was burned to the ground, your cattle slaughtered and all your possession looted. The land you toiled on for the past five years was taken away from you just because you spoke a different language. The government vengefully instigated the problem and didn't lift a finger to protect innocent citizens. You barely escaped. One of your sisters-in-law whom you brought with you was killed in a skirmish. All the children escaped the situation unharmed but three of them became orphans. Many of your neighbors in the area who spoke your language were massacred just because they were from a different ethnic group. The restructuring of the country into ethnic based regions took a tremendous toll and directly contributed to the food crisis. It exacerbated the problem of poverty and pushed many otherwise stable communities into desperation. Once again, the government was talking more about how to do things instead of doing what is right.

As if dividing the country was not enough, the government started its own war in the name of territorial integrity. Ironically, it assumed power by boasting that it has addressed the reasons for war by allowing ethnic groups the right to secede. After selling a chunk of the nation to its former mentors, it shamelessly resorted to corruption, nepotism and blatant cheating. The people paid with their lives and resources as they continued to drown in poverty. And the cycle of deception, impoverishment and hopelessness continued.

By sheer luck and some miracle you escaped the continuing massacre and headed for the capital where everybody seems to be flocking in search of a safe heaven. Your broken family consisted of your second wife, your only daughter, two sisters, two sisters-in-law, their six children and the three-orphaned children of your deceased sister-in-law. It was just the beginning of another ordeal in your miserable life. You tried to keep your family together in the big city but it became impossible as your resources were depleted quickly. The need for survival made it necessary to go in different directions. The able ones worked menial jobs for small wages. But nobody would consider the ones with children for any job. The only available choice was begging and they reluctantly got into it as hunger consumed their frail bodies.

Gradually you lost contact with most of them. The kids became street children with no homes. The teenage girls worked on the streets at night selling their poverty stricken bodies for money. Most of them contracted AIDS. This kind of desperation has led the country to the position of being the land with the sixth largest AIDS infected population in the world. Government aided this scourge by allowing the continued expansion of decadence in the form of night clubs, brothels, and the spread of drugs such as Khat which has been allowed to spread all over the nation without any restriction.

Your sister was lucky enough to get a job as a maid earning little more than what she would get as a beggar. You, on the other hand, couldn't get a job because of your disability. Though she tried desperately, nobody would consider your second wife because of the children and she was forced to beg on the streets. After a while she was found dead on an alley following a police raid on beggars. She had no idea that desperation was a criminal act. Just before she died, she gave birth to a premature baby. But the unfortunate baby passed away in your hands a few days after her mother's death. She died without any medical help on the wet and muddy streets of Addis Ababa during the rainy season coughing her little lungs out. She could have been saved. But nobody cared. After her death, you decided to take your prosthetic leg off for the special effect it has on onlookers. It produces sympathy from many and helps generate coins barely enough to keep you alive. Some people look at you with contempt when you tell them that you were a soldier, some show you sympathy, but many are indifferent.

Your sister helped you financially for a while but she disappeared eventually. You heard that she started working as a prostitute out of desperation and she didn't want you to know. She was ashamed. Soon she contracted HIV/AIDS and died at the tender age of twenty-five in a makeshift shelter she shared with a fellow prostitute.

Your only family member who remained in your old village was your sister with her new husband. They were once gain forced to abandon the village because of a severe drought, which affected more than 15 million Ethiopians. It became the worst disaster of the new Century. According to the United Nations this was supposed to be the century in which hunger should have been eliminated from the face of this earth. Unfortunately in Ethiopia, it is getting worse. The government is scrambling to milk as much aid from the food crisis as possible. The people's life however is deteriorating beyond imagination.

Seeing no hope in subsistence farming your sister's family along with other victims migrated to the capital. Her husband worked for a while as a laborer but decided to resort to crime. He was shot dead by a guard while trying to scale a rich man's fence. A year after his unfortunate death, his wife died of AIDS. Their two children are HIV positive. They became AIDS orphans and are seen on the streets of Addis Ababa begging and they sing about the perils of being orphaned to their patrons in exchange for coins.

Although you haven't received formal education, you taught yourself how to read and write. Through your exposure to development workers during your stay at the feeding shelter and in the course of your military career, you have acquired some knowledge about the world. But you are baffled by the way things work. The simplest things are complicated for the selfish gain of a few and you just couldn't believe that people who claim to be educated, democratic, fair and civilized could allow the misery and suffering that you and your people endure. You see the elite passing you by in their expensive vehicles as if you owe them an apology for showing them your misery. They are so hopelessly mis-educated and don't show any sign of concern or compassion.

The foreigners you see on the streets passing you by hurriedly, seem to be busy working hard and claim to study and improve your life, your land, your economy and everything else but you have seen nothing coming out of it. The result, as far as you can tell has brought you more suffering and you have the feeling that the intent was just that and nothing else.

You had hoped that your leaders and the international community would help your country find a lasting solution to the problems of poverty and underdevelopment. You feel betrayed as consecutive governments failed to bring meaningful change. With each government that took power, your situation deteriorated. After all, the world is witnessing a great deal of advance in science and technology but the country is quickly becoming a land of beggars. It is also turning into a dumping ground for unneeded junk, decadence, corruption and all that is evil.

To your dismay, the world doesn't care much about your life and condition. Those who have seen pictures and videos of your dying brothers and sisters just wish they are not in your shoes and contribute some money to avoid the guilt. They don't actually take the time to know how you got there. They haven't heard your side of the story and they don't want to know or have the capacity to analyze how this could happen continuously without any results. Many don't even realize that their governments have contributed in one way or another to your misery. Mostly they tend to blame you for not working hard, for being lazy or ignorant. Some sympathize with you in a paternalistic manner knowing very well that you have the capability and the right to lead as good a life as theirs. Yes, their contribution has made it possible for you to survive by sending you food and you are grateful for that. But you cannot comprehend why they help those who destroy your life and make you a pawn in their quest for dominance when they know that what is being done is wrong. You wonder why mismanagement is rewarded and why the world magnifies differences instead of reinforcing cooperation and unity. You just couldn't understand why they supported and keep supporting the corrupt governments that suck your blood while they know that no good is coming out of their administration. You just couldn't comprehend why they let your government and other organizations put aside their responsibilities and use you, the people, as reason to look for assistance when they deliberately make things worse to fulfill their ulterior motives.

The international community, world powers and others make their presence known to you by supplying humanitarian aid on one hand and sending weapons for your destruction on the other. Most of those who came in the guise of helping you departed with your wealth stuffed in their pockets as they made a fortune out of your misery. Yes you feel betrayed, deceived, cheated and forgotten. Within your short life on this earth you saw despots being replaced by dictators, and dictators, by bigots all in your name. Life however has gotten worse for you and millions of your countrymen and women who toil under the most primitive conditions to make a living. For every step you took in the right direction, each of these governments contributed their share to pull you two steps back through their misdirected policies, biased governance, greed and overall lack of good will. Foreign governments and international development agencies including NGOs aided and abated these governments in the implementation of misguided and detrimental programs.

There may be a million variations of this story associated to each victim of famine which continuously and insatiably claimed innocent lives over a period of forty years. Desperation, misery, hunger, poverty and death are common to all victims with varying circumstances in farming communities and pastoral areas across the nation. With good will, determination and cooperation famine could have been defeated, but government and international agencies neglected the root causes of the problem. Thousands have been saved as a result of international intervention but millions have perished. The lives of many survivors have been irreversibly shattered. Nevertheless, no tangible and serious enough effort has been made to thoroughly address the issue and eliminate hunger and underdevelopment for good. Peace, stability, security and common sense were and are still continuously overlooked while the world concentrates on finding a cure to a problem that is deliberately fueled and exacerbated.

You are now about forty-one years old, although nobody knows exactly when you were born. According to Ethiopian life expectancy, you are now an old man. If the statistics proves true you should die within the next couple of years. With luck, the tough life you led will be rewarded with sudden death. Otherwise, you will most likely succumb to a preventable disease for lack of simple antibiotics and you will suffer. The end for a majority of your peers will most likely be the same. It could be due to malnutrition, lack of food or a preventable disease. They will die prematurely after toiling for over forty years with nothing to show for their hard work, and without any hope in sight for their children. Poverty, diseases and war will consume the rest. What a waste! For millions of poor Ethiopians, the hardest working most enduring people on this earth, this is how life has been for the past forty years. How about the next forty years? How has your life been? Ask yourself what you would have felt or done if this had been your life? When will this holocaust end?