Private Sector Development is Key to Political Development in Ethiopia

Please read my recent article on Ethiopia: Private Sector Development is Key to Political Development in Ethiopia

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"Being President is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but stand there and take it!" -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States of America - 1963-1969

Ethiopia: Land of Beautiful People, Stunning Landscape, and Delicious Coffee

A landlocked country of over a million square kilometers (about twice the size of Texas), 85 million people, over 80 ethnicities, and at least as many languages, Ethiopia is a country rich with history, culture, and beautiful landscape. However, what strikes a visitor the most is the beauty and warmth if its people. I traveled to Adama in the south, Wenchie in the west, and as far north as Mekelle, and I was always welcomed warmly by gorgeous, warm, and proud people of all ages.

Ethiopia has a delicious cuisine of indigenous food and a hint of Italian influence on its pastas and coffees. Ah! The coffee! I’ve never had a better macchiato anywhere, and the traditional three round of dark, delicious Ethiopian coffee service is an out-of-this-world experience. (For more on the coffee service, please read my previous blog: Almaz, the Coffee Lady at the Addis Ababa Hilton.)

Below is a random photo essay of the people and landscape of Ethiopia. I hope you enjoy reviewing the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

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“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”

Jane Austen.

I'm Finally a Billionaire

Actually a Billionaire and a Trillionaire. I have in my possession two legal bills (real money); one for 50 Trillion Dollars (50,000,000,000,000)and the other for 50 Billion Dollars. I have copies of them below. Wait, wait! These are Zimbabwean dollars, worth next to 50 cents or so. So, I am a Zim Millionaire, like every citizen of Zimbabwe.

The southern African country battled the world's highest inflation rate, officially put at 231 million percent. In lay terms, something you bought on or about January 1st for 1 dollar was worth 231 million by the end of the year. It’s a lot better now after the Zimbabwean government accepted to use the ol’ Greenback (U.S Dollar) as legal currency.

Almaz, the Coffee Lady at the Addis Ababa Hilton

Drinking coffee is not the act of shoveling smoldering hot fluids down one’s throat, but the act of sipping, contemplating, breathing, and day dreaming. I had forgotten how delicious coffee can be; how soothing an effect it can have on me; and how therapeutic it is to my soul.

Almaz, the Diamond of Abyssinia, managed to hold a circle of sanity in the middle of a crazy world. Every morning during my stay in Addis Ababa, I headed for the peace of the coffee circle and towards Almaz, its High Queen. This rhythm was catching, and by the third day, I found myself blending in, and coffee will never be the same again. The singular pleasure of enjoying a cup of coffee has turned communal and I looked forward to it. I was able to find a moment for myself among the nondescript coffee revelers. As the rest of the hotel lobby was hustling and bustling, the coffee drinkers were in a different time zone.

Every day, before I left for the melee of arms, legs, and raised dust as the people of Addis went about their business in the sprawling city of five million, I journeyed hypnotically for my dose of sanity in the domain of Almaz. During my travels to Ethiopia, there was nothing as comforting in the early hours that precede a long day of meetings as the gentle smile of the coffee lady or the simple taste of the coffee she served. As I headed down from my room in the wee hours of the morning, blissfully anticipating that coffee, soft aroma of incents leaked into the elevator, heightening my anticipation. I approached the coffee corner, where men sat sipping meditatively on the little cups of dark coffee, and invariably found Almaz waiting to serve me my first cup.

There she was, so majestic in her splendor and her modest yet stunning beauty, sitting atop the raised coffee corner, above everyone else, as she looked down onto her subjects. To welcome me and demonstrate her acceptance of the newcomer into her flock, and with an intoxicating smile, she sprinkles the Etan onto the hot coals causing the smoke to rise and the sweet aroma of the incents to engulf the entire corner. Then, with her eyes, she points to the stool I’m to sit in and picks up the coffee Jebenah that’s been percolating on the Midja full of hot coals, and pours my first cup of coffee into the round Sini. She leans towards me, and with both hands around the Sini, she hands it to me with the grace of a ballet dancer and the courtesy and confidence of royalty.

Drinking the coffee, I realize how surrendering to Almaz’s persuading powers, and the tranquility her coffee offers, balance my urge to run outside for the first meeting. I learn that nobody else in her serene circle is in a rush. This is time they keep for themselves and for her. I take a quick peek at my watch and decide to surrender and lapse into contemplative silence.

After three Sini fulls and just as quickly as bliss descends on me and I feel the warmth of Almaz’s smile and the intoxicating taste of her coffee, my Ethiopian friend walks in briskly and calls my name. He sits next to me and, oblivious to the celestial power of the Sini in his hands, he takes in a cup of hot coffee as he hurriedly tells me our schedule for the day. I stare at him groggily, and shudder to think of the nightmare of the Addis streets and the swirled dust that will penetrate every orifice of my body. I hesitate for a second, then, with a sigh, I pull myself to my feet, trying to muster the will to face the real world. As we walk outside, I look back at the coffee corner and think “I will always have Almaz.” She gave me a whole new meaning to having coffee. It is not the act of shoveling smoldering hot fluids down one’s throat, but the act of sipping, contemplating, breathing, and day dreaming.

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“The need to surrender is one of the great paradoxes of love. Surrender may seem like giving up. Or giving in. But in reality we are strengthened when we actively choose to make ourselves vulnerable. We are empowered by sharing our deepest self with another person, offering him or her our heart, our soul, our life. Surrender is an act of free will. A sacred trust.”
Ellen Sue Stern

The Dog Wars of Awasa

I really felt that every single dog in Ethiopia had descended on the backyard of our small hotel in Awasa for the epic war that was certainly being waged to decide which dog and which bitch were the king and queen of the canine kingdom of Abyssinia. I swear I was unable to discern when the exact moment the live howls ended and when the Memorex echoes inside my exhausted brain picked up. The sounds ricocheted around the room walls like little balls at the Chinese national ping pong championship. These sounds lingered in an off-tune symphony of howling that kept me up all night.

I’ll come back to the howling orgy in a minute, but let me start from the top. My colleague Julie and I arrived in Addis Ababa on Monday night and were picked up at the airport by our Ethiopian friends, the ever-smiling CIPE consultants Henok and Hailemelekot (H&H as Julie liked to call them). After a short night’s sleep, they picked us up again at the hotel at 6:30 the next morning for the drive to the south-eastern city of Adama in the predominately Muslim region of Oromia. There, we met with a few of the civil society organizations we plan to assist, including two very interesting organizations.

The Adama Women Entrepreneurs Association is run by Roman, an intense looking middle aged woman that resembled the go-to aunt that each of us went to for refuge whenever we were in real trouble. Dressed in a dusty black dress and a red scarf tied in that authentically distinctive Ethiopian manner with a knot just over her left ear, she was very frugal in her words and hardly cracked a smile. However, she had such a presence that when she talked, everyone in the room listened intensely. She herself is a silkworm farmer and an owner of a small café, but she volunteered her time to help women entrepreneurs.

I know exactly what you’re thinking. Entrepreneurs! These are educated middle class women who have mucho dinero to invest and are the owners of the local Starbucks and McDonalds. Right? Think again. These are women such as Salam, who bakes Ingera bread at home and sells it at 6:00 AM in the local market, and Egigayehu who owns a few cows and milks them in the wee hours of the morning so that she can sell the milk to the local coffee shops, and Rahel who buys the local ingredients so that she can process them into spices she can sell to restaurants that prepare Doro-wote, Firfir, Gomen-Besiga and other Ethiopian dishes. Roman’s organization collects the equivalent of 15 cents a month from 400 such entrepreneurs so that she and her two person staff can help them pool resources and obtain small loans that allow them to sustain their businesses and feed their families. These women don’t have the capacity to apply for micro loans or fill out an application to register the business. Julie, our team, and I will do our best to help improve the organization’s financial and technical resources, offer it networking opportunities, and improve its capacity and potential to advocate for these women’s rights.

The Ye’ewuket Ber Savings and Credit Association is run by one of the most amazing women I’ve met in a very long time. At first sight, Tsige projects a diminutive unimpressive dusty look of an exhausted farmer after she’d plowed the field the entire day. Her prune-like wrinkled face and dust-teared eyes tell a thousand stories of pain and betrays years of hard labor taking care of a large family. However, one should not let that fragile exterior fool him. That Mother Theresa-like giant of a woman willed the organization into existence. Along with a few friends and relatives in her neighborhood, she collects payments from local women micro-farmers, no matter how small, into a “savings account” for each of them. While no bank in Ethiopia would be interested in such pittance of accounts, Tsige and the organization are able to provide these women with hope and security for the future. In addition, the members are able to secure small loans to help them conduct their businesses and wither hard times. Although the borrowers are unable to provide any collateral to secure the loans, the success rate of repayment is 100%. Each borrower is a member, co-owner, and stakeholder in the success of the savings and credit association. Built-in collateral.

Tsige welcomed us in a cramped room full of beneficiaries and members that seemed genuinely happy to see us, not because they needed anything from us, but rather because of their interest in the two “guests” that came from America to see them and hear their stories. Julie, Henok, Hailemelekot and I were in awe and reverence of this saint. Although we came to offer our help – and we’ll definitely do whatever we can to assist them with sustainability, access, and networking – Tsige said good bye with an offer to put her hand in ours and help us as we attempt to help other Ethiopians. I have a feeling that she will help us far more than we can ever help her.

The four of us left the small association drunk in a euphoric sense of hope that this world will still be OK because women like Tsige are taking care of it. We visited a few other organizations in Adama and other towns and lined them up for our upcoming capacity building training, but the sweet memory of Roman and Tsige remained with us for the rest of the trip and will be with me for a lifetime. This tethering experience reinforced my faith in God and vindicated my career and why I suffer through all the travels around the world, leaving Selma, my family, and my home behind.

Rush, our Oromian driver (his real name is Rahimo – Arabic for merciful) took us on the scenic 275 kilometer trek along the mixed use road to Awasa in the Southern region. We had to compete for the use of the narrow two lane road with farmers carrying their crops to the local Tuesday market, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, and camels. These animals, especially the donkeys, had no fear. Whenever they felt like it, they just stared the cars down and took their time crossing the road. During the drive, we stared at the distant magnificence of Lake Langano and the “Three Lakes” and passed by countless species of trees, some indigenous to Ethiopia. Some of the trees were exactly what Radhia would describe as “trees with character”.

At about sunset, we finally arrived in Awasa and ominously headed for the brand new small hotel. After being welcomed by a life-size portrait of “The Founder”, we checked in, left our baggage in our rooms, and went out for a restful time on the gorgeous Awasa Lake, which was promptly followed by a delicious meal of authentic spicy Ethiopian dishes.

Well, as promised, let’s get back to the Bark-fest at the Enjou Hotel in Awasa. Needless to say, back at the hotel, I was utterly exhausted and in dire need of a restful night of blissful sleep. Ha!!!!! In what was billed as an in-room sauna and steam bath, I was unable to get a hot shower; only dribbles of cold water. Talk about Chutzpah!!!!! I’m not going to bore you with the details of the phantom in-room steam facility (made in China). All I will say is that I was in a very forgiving mood just ready to sleep. I was not going to “call the manager and complain”. Alas, as I crawled into bed silently, fully expecting to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow to dream of Radhia’s angelic face and her teasingly exotic perfume, the moans started. At first, I thought it was a child crying. Then the moans grew into howls. It sounded like I was in the middle of a jungle. Monkeys, birds, I was sure I even heard an elephant. When I cracked open the bathroom window I realized that these were the painful cries of dogs readying for battle. Some were whining, others were coughing, and yet others barked in epileptic convulsions that sent sickening shivers down my spine. There was something sinister in the manner the dogs howled as if they were targeting me. Every time I put one of the pillows over my head praying for silence, the dogs increased the volume with unerring accuracy; enough for me to hear every octave.

Te howling raged for hours until, thankfully, the sound of the Moathen, marking Fajr and the eminent departure of this night from hell, brought me hope. After praying and having a cup of excellent macchiato, I packed my bags and headed for check out. This time, in addition to the portrait of the founder of the hotel, I was welcomed by the beautiful smile of the young lady at the reception desk inquiring shyly “I hope you’ve enjoyed a restful sleep, Ato.”


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"It is the true season of Love when we know that we alone can love,
that no one could ever have loved before us,
and that no one will ever Love in the same way after us."
Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe