Lakuka and her children, Afar, Ethiopia. (Photo: Jane Beesley)

By Jane Beesley | Oxfam

AFAR, ETHIOPIA – Worsening drought and high food prices are pushing many families in Ethiopia to the brink. Humanitarian Communications Officer Jane Beesley reports.

Afar, close to the Eritrea and Djibouti borders in Ethiopia, is dry and hot. It’s one of those places where extremes exist, bizarre juxtapositions. Cutting through the landscape is one of the best roads in Ethiopia, slick and black, linking Addis Ababa with Djibouti. Truck after truck hurtles through a landscape that resembles the surface of a far and distant planet – bare, dry, rocky. You think that nothing could possibly survive here, but there are scatterings of small dwellings – almost unnoticeable, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding large boulders and grey-brown landscape.

It’s early morning, already hot and the shade has virtually disappeared.

Lakuka (pictured) tells us that they have moved to be near the road. Things have got so bad they have left the areas they normally go to during a drought to be close to the road for two reasons: for transport (they have lost their burden animals), and in search of aid. She tells us she only has enough food for the family for today.

It’s a tight squeeze as we go through the entrance to Asha Yousef’s home (a quick reminder of how much bigger and fatter we are) but, for a brief moment, it gives Asha and her family some entertainment. The kettle is put on the fire and we are given a glass of piping hot, sweet tea: even in the harshest of times, hospitality to strangers is instantly offered.Â

Asha tells us about how they have lost most of their animals, and she’s been trying to feed her family with the few remaining ones. But, as she points out, while the price of goats hasn’t varied a great deal (100-150[1] Birr), the price of sorghum has doubled or tripled (from 100/200 to 400/600 Birr). People have had to trade more goats, from two to three, four, five, depending on their condition, for one 50 kg sack of sorghum.

Asha recently received some food aid, but tells us it will last six days. Asked what she will do when the food runs out, she says, “I’ll trade one of my three goats for some pasta. I don’t have enough goats to trade for a bag of grain.” And asked what she will do when the three goats have gone she says, “God knows.”

Asha’s elderly mother, Rockia, remembers a different time, when the rains came four times a year and there was pasture and plenty of milk. “When I was young there were problems, but not like this. The nature of the area means that water has always been a problem but, when I compare it to today, the environment then was very good.” In recent times the four rains have become two, and the failure of these rains is becoming more frequent, like those expected earlier this year.

Elsewhere, Amina is trying to breastfeed her two-year-old child Hassana, who looks severely malnourished. It’s a time when you face one of the dilemmas of the job. You come to see, to ask people questions, to report back on the situation – trying to raise awareness, trying to raise funds etc., but in so doing you can raise expectations and hope that something will happen.

The landscape reminds me of Mauritania, where once I asked some women what they were cooking. They told me “nothing”, then explained that when they had no food they put a pot of water on a fire so the children would think a meal was coming and eventually they would fall asleep. If the children knew there was no food, they would start crying and there was nothing the women could do.Â

I wonder if our visit today is like that pot of water.

- Oxfam in Ethiopia