So what are you doing for work anyway?

31 January 2012 

My assigned work office is the Agriculture and Rural development office, which I am involved with through my connection with Zewditu. Our town is the center of the woreda, or district, in the zone of W. Arsi which is in the Region (essentially a state or province) of Oromia, there are 9 regions in Ethiopia.

 Inside our woreda we are responsible for 22 kabeles, or rural towns. These kabeles were originally separate klans which had their own means of governance and land distribution. In 1974 when the imperial regime fell with the death of Emperor Haili Selassie, the communist Derg regime came into power and land reform was at the top of their agenda. The idea was that before private land holdings created a system of feudalism where very few people held land creating an enormous lower class of indentured workers. The Derg nationalized all the land so it was not possible to own private land. The traditional klans became kabeles with “peasants associations” as a form of small-scale local governance. The office I work with acts as a liaison to implement the national government’s policies in the rural kabeles. Are you still following me? If so, here are two of the ongoing projects my office is busy working on:

Soil erosion mitigation: Creation of physical structure to reduce soil erosion. These terraces, check dams or canals are all built by hand, not machines. My office loans out tools as the peasants don’t even have the basics to begin the work. Currently soil conservation measures are of high priority because the rainy season (our first of two) is coming next month and with the rain washes the soil and the potential productivity of next year’s crop. It is astonishing to see the work ethic of these farmers as they build 300+ m of bunt terraces, and canals to channel water away from fields.

Nursery development and reforestation: Since Ethiopia has seen a deforestation rate of 150,000 hectares annually with a total forest cover loss of 40% (historically) to 3% (currently). The government is attempting to replace trees in hope of reversing the trend. My office is mandated to give free tree seeds to any individual, group or peasant association that desires to plant trees. The strange part is that my office has to buy these seeds from the government and their budget is pretty limited already. Regardless, they do their best to meet the needs of the people. Currently we are weighing, sorting and delivering tree seeds from several native and exotic species. The recipients are expect to grow the seeds to seedlings are replant them to their permanent site taking all the precautions necessary to ensure their survival. This process requires a lot of time and money spent by the people in my office who work 6 days a week, unfortunately their efforts are trumped by an annual seedling fatality rate of around 50%.

Somewhere in all of this there is an opportunity for me to have a master’s thesis. I’m considering investigating the mortality rate and figuring out a way to give greater incentive to the farmers for them to better ensure the seedlings’ survival. Also, there seems to be a lack of training to care for seedlings, which are notoriously finicky. A project to encourage reciprocal knowledge sharing so that the people were teaching each other, instead of waiting for someone from the government to re-train them every few years would be ideal.  Seems like a good area to spend my time that would give back to my office, the greater community and the beautiful landscapes I get to call home for 2 years.