Ethiopia

I had the great opportunity to travel out to Babile, a strip of land that divides the Somali and the Oromia regions of Ethiopia.

This land has been hit by ongoing drought for over a year now. It’s also home to thousands of pastoralist families, who are surviving drought and harsh weather.

Water is extremely scarce here; so people need to move according to water availability.

I was keen to find out how the weather has affected children’s experiences and their access to education.

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Schooling against many challenges

I visited a school and spoke to children of all ages, their teacher and community members.

The school has three grades and caters for children from as young as three, as well as their older siblings up to the age of 21.

This used to be one of our project areas under Bridges, a DFID-funded programme involving a system of ‘networked’ and mobile schools that cater for children’s pastoralist lifestyles, ensuring that school moves with them.

Bedria is the eldest of her siblings. In this photo she carries the youngest one. Bedria’s only experience of education was a month in school, many years ago. Now she looks after her family and often takes care of the cattle. She wishes she could go to school, but then, who would feed her family? Bedria doesn’t want to marry and told us she will resist any attempt.

School drop-outs

The only teacher in this school has been teaching for many years, often teaching under trees until the local government built the existing school.

The teacher said that once children have gone away for a few days to fetch water, the likelihood of them ever going back to school is reduced. Some would come back, some would get involved in other activities, while girls over 14 years old might get married.

He was very clear that the drop-out rate is about to increase and that Babile has not yet seen the worst effects of migration to other areas with more water.

Children’s education in this very dry region tests parents’ willingness to prioritise education when children are needed to support the family with essential house chores or cattle rearing.

All the children I spoke to want to stay in school and they want their friends who have dropped out to return to school.

They want a well or other source of water to reach them soon, so that they don’t have to keep moving and can stay in this school.

Speak up for education

While the ongoing crisis in East Africa means that other life-saving work has more prominence than education, it is still essential that we hear more about what education means for the region’s children.

Missing out on education will have a big impact on their lives, as well as on their resilience and development, so we need to speak up.

The Horn of Africa is currently experiencing the most severe food crisis so far this century – 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are affected, hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation, and some estimates place the death toll at 50,000-100,000.

There were warning signs as early as August 2010 but almost across the board they were not significantly acted upon until well into 2011, despite East Africa’s longstanding propensity to drought and food insecurity.

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“We have seen a lot of things here. There has been badness in the past. This village is prone to conflict.”
Proud of his education and keen to demonstrate his leadership of the small village, Mujahid is emphatic when telling me about the new school that we helped to build.

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In a remote village in Ethiopia’s Afar region, a teenage boy, Abdu Ahamed, walks next to me, peppering me with questions in broken English. I sit down and talk to him, partly in English, mostly in Amharic, with the help of a translator who sits unobtrusively next to me.

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“It is not safe to sleep alone, or travel alone for water or firewood – rape is common here. In our tradition, males cannot gather firewood – this is seen as a woman’s work and embarrassing for a man. We usually go out after it is cooler, which is towards the evening. I have heard many reports of rape here.”

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The good news is that in the last ten years significant progress has been made in increasing the enrolment of the world’s out of school children in primary education. However, we shouldn’t let these gains mask the enormity of the challenge that still lies ahead and the unfinished global agenda of providing good quality education to all the world’s children.

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The landscape of South Wollo, a ten hour drive from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, is beautiful – sort of like a lush green Grand Canyon with the most incredible views from the high mountain roads. It’s were I embarked on my first field trip.

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It’s clear that the call for an end to child marriage is strong but the complexity and deep-rooted traditions in Ethiopia present a huge challenge to being completely eradicated. Child marriage is a hugely prevalent issue in many countries, much more than I realised, and has massive repercussions not only on the girls but also hinders development out of poverty as young married girls get no education and their health is severely impeded.

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The day I arrived there were heavy downpours and thunderstorms so it’s strange to think this is the same country in which thousands of pastoral people are in a desperate situation because the rains have failed them.

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Ismael Ayah Gasle has been an Animal Health Technician in Ethiopia’s Somali region for the last 10 years. He told me that animals are now in the worst condition he has ever seen.

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