A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) - Part III

Luzia, Helene, Matthias and Tiago are ETH students who participated in a two-week field project to Arba Minch, situated in the Gamo Gofa zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) in Ethiopia from 16 November to 1 December 2019. Here, they share some memories of their numerous encounters and exchanges.

Read more about the class in the first post of this series.

Fisherman at Lake Abaya (by Luzia Zuidema)

Photo: Luzia Zuidema

The picture shows a fisherman who is gutting the fish in the lake. The picture was taken on our second day, when our Ethiopian team members wanted to eat fish with us. A little bit unsure if we could eat it (the water of the lake was completely brown and we didn't want to know how many and which bacteria were swimming in it), we agreed to at least accompany them. The fish was bought from the fisherman and finally "barbecued" as a whole on the fire. Completely black, but definitely bacteria free, we finally took it out of the fire. We only needed to scrape off a little bit of the black skin and underneath came out white, well fried, fresh fish meat. Hardly anyone of us had such fresh fish before and it tasted excellent. Additionally, we also talked to the fisherman, who gave us a lot of information about fishery in this village and problems they face. Therefore, we included this extraordinary experience perfectly into our work and work wasn’t only work anymore but a very pleasant task. This special adventure welded our group together and we had a lot of fun and learned a lot during the two weeks in Ethiopia.

Hospitality (by Helene Renaux)

Photo: Anke Coolens

The picture shows half of our group doing an interview with a female houshold leader in the village Algae, near Mirab Abaya. With questionnaires about food intake and diversity we tried to estimate the food security of housholds in this village. Even though we sometimes asked strange questions and behaved like students, which are on their first field trip, the farmers helped us in all possible ways. If you would imagine this the other way around - some Ethiopian students entering your farm/house in Switzerland asking you about your diet and income - would you serve them a coffee, too?

“Not so far” (Matthias Diener)

Photo: Matthias Diener

The interview with Afaresh (the lady on the left) we did in her Banana field. When we met her at her house and asked her how far the field is, she said: “not so far”. “Not so far” meant more than 40 minutes walking, and crossing a big river where the water came up to our knees. Additionally, the roads were so muddy because of the heavy rain, that it was really challenging to get to her field. She was an old lady living on her own and had to walk all the time this big distance, which astonished us a lot. I thought, how much a bike, a well-maintained path or a bridge over the river would help. In our village Lante many people faced the problem, that the fields were very far away or on the other side of the river. We realized especially in the case of Afaresh, that the distance to the field for some farmers was a serious problem leading to food insecurity, because the access to the field was just too difficult.

The Sachs motorcycle (by Tiago Ernst)

Photo: Matthias Diener

Beside the work we had to do, the contact with local people is something I will never forget. The majority of people have been so nice and open towards us European students, even though the language was a big issue. But the difficulties to communicate were overcome right away when I started to speak with a guy about his motorcycle: a Sachs motorcycle, a kind of old one for Europe, but a normal one for Africa. I asked the guy if I could try to drive his motorcycle, because I like so much such old models. He immediately agreed and I was very enthusiastic as long as I realized there was no clutch on the handlebars… So the short ride became a funny, but also such a complicated adventure for me: I had to concentrate not only on avoiding the holes in the road, but also to change between gears in a correct way even without a clutch!

We are grateful for the financial support by the WFSC (Course Support Grant for WFSC members) to the field projects in 2019 (Ethiopia), 2018 (Kenya) and 2017 (Ethiopia).