The project co-ordinators spent a successful
ten days in Ethiopia laying the foundations for the two-month
expedition in March-April 2000.
There is a unique satisfaction in hurtling around an African city in a taxi hired by the hour and arriving as a total stranger in someone's office. Being a lay scientist wearing a progressively more filthy set of shirt, tie and smart trousers never helps explaining a rather complex project. Some people cannot believe who you are, let alone what your project entails.
Nevertheless we achieved our aims of meeting our counterparts at the University of Addis Ababa, having the project endorsed and supported by government ministries, raising the profile through newspaper interviews and travelling to the Blue Nile Gorge to see the terrain Ethiopian Venture will be operating in.
It has taken us 10 days to get all the necessary paperwork sorted out before we leave for the field. This has included 'permissions' letters from all of the following:
And that's just in Addis! We have to go through the same 'red tape' zone in the regions' capitals. But we've got a week or two before we need to think about that.
We have spent two days at a symposium on 'Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods in Ethiopia' where there were talks by people from a range of fields - from Government regional offices to International Aid Agencies. It transpires that over 8 million people will require food aid this year as the rains have failed again. Since 1996 the rains have been failing frequently and more and more people are becoming vulnerable to devastating famines.
Anna managed to hit the front page of the Ethiopian Herald as a result (far right corner of a photograph of a packed conference room)…
It's hot (cool in the evenings) and the Hilton Addis are looking after us well (maybe too well - we've both succumbed to poorly stomachs in the last few days).
We will be leaving Addis Ababa on Thursday 16th
March (am) and setting off North towards our first research point -
Dejen, on the Blue Nile. From there we will make our way slowly up
the Blue Nile Gorge towards Lake Tana, looking for limestone
caves
(stalagmites) and indigenous trees (tree-rings).
We will hopefully be able to transmit our next update from the Amhara region's capital, Bahir Dar, in a couple of weeks time.
It is day 10 and we are resting by
Lake Tana at the regional capital of Bahir Dar. The first phase of
the fieldwork has been successful and we have samples to prove
it!
Having scoured the limestone region of the Blue Nile (roughly 200km in length) it was on our third attempt at entering the gorge and trekking its tributaries that we at last came across a huge exposure of limestone. Through a very narrow entrance lay a real cave!
Although geologically there should be plenty of caves found in limestone, the reality when matched with locals knowledge has transpired to be very different.
Rafting the river would definitely be the
easiest way to 'cave spot': it is a bit 'hit and miss' matching
altitude with rock and relying upon someone to lead you to something
more than just an 'overhang'.
Our first caving day resulted in heat exhaustion for James and a cave in the loosest sense of the word. The second yielded a fantastic cave, but made of sandstone. It is reputed to go on for 10km and emerge at another village.
Third time lucky! After a stunning two-hour trek down to the village of Mesobit overlooking the Nile, we eventually came to a proper limestone cave. Ignoring the python and porcupine, we found two stalagmites, both about 1.5 metres from the cave floor and 0.25m in length. They came away easily and were returned to the plateau intact by a very insistent local.
This may be the first occasion that stalagmites have been identified and removed from the Blue Nile. A few caving societies may be excited by the cave finds.
We were successful in finding some 600 year-old Juniper trees in a churchyard not so far from the stalagmite site. This means that information gained from these samples is more likely to be accurate as it can be calibrated together with the stalagmites. See 'Scientific Aims'.
Long car days, routine pleasantries and permission-seeking, hordes of frenzied children, smelly loos and bucket showers…
There are two additions to the team:
Tess - our 'fixer' without whom we would never have got close to finding anything at all
Ibrahim - our driver who gets us safely from A to B
The next phase: Heading North towards the Simien Mountains and ancient city of Gondar. Our next update will probably come from the city of Mekele, Tigray Province, in a couple of weeks time.
The second phase
has taken us north of Lake Tana up to the Simien Mountains and across
the country to Lalibela. It took us 4 hours to cover 100km to one of
the remotest parts of Ethiopia where a road at 4200m has only
recently been constructed. Having left Gonder (one of Ethiopia's
three ancient cities) in hot sunshine, 6 hours later James found
himself ill-prepared for snow and ice (dressed as he was in his
swimming trunks!). The village of Mekane Birhan was certainly
surprised to see us as we emerged through a thick cloud of rain and
wind.
Yes, the rainy season has reached some parts of Ethiopia!
Anna conducted the first of her three
investigations into how people cope when famine hits. This part of
the project is divided into two sections: "famine foods" (i.e. wild
plants that are utilised when crops fail) and coping strategies (e.g.
migration, begging). With the help of Tess, she interviewed three
local people as well as the local administrators.
No hotels here!
The newly-built clinic provided floor-space for sleeping/cooking/washing and conveniently it wasn't far for James to go to seek medical attention for a rapidly spreading skin allergy.
The local church, reputedly one of Ethiopia's
oldest, contains in its grounds some ancient juniper trees.
Unfortunately morale was at an all-time low with stomach bugs and
continued skin allergies, and the equipment that got stuck in the
trees was almost left there. However we managed to retrieve six good
cores, including a new record (25cm).
5 days later we were in another remote area,
Tsiska, near to the town of Sekota. This was in fact only 100km SE of
Mekane Birhan, but such are the vagaries of road and bureaucratic
systems (both mountainous), that it took us almost a week. We did
however stop off at Lalibela, home to Ethiopia's famous 12th century
rock-hewn churches.
James collapsed again after a particularly
holy morning, and was escorted back to the hotel.
The second set of 'famine food' interviews in Tsiska left us free to head further north for the final phase: the limestone country of Tigray. Although we have expedition reports to lead us to cave sites and two photographs (locations unknown), it is bound to be as hit-and-miss as before…
A broken brake cable left us free-wheeling most of the way north to Mekele, the capital of Tigray province. From here we would be conducting our second search for limestone caves and old juniper trees. We would also conduct the third famine food survey.
This time round with the caves, we supposedly knew exactly where to search, following a British report from the 1970s. James spent hours rigorously plotting the locations. Unfortunately, after arriving at the exact GPS fix for the first two of these, we discovered that the previous expedition were either lying or that latitude/longitude has changed dramatically since the '70s. After some local smirking we were shown to a cave that they had been telling us about from the start. And, lo and behold, it was heaving with stalagmites. A fantastic find. 3 hours later we emerged with 3 fine specimens and a local stonemason complaining he'd been underpaid.
The third location from the '70s report was tried the next day. This cave certainly existed but again, our efforts were frustrated by an unforeseen circumstance. It was fair enough that the Ethiopians had built a church across the large cave entrance. However, irritating that the monk with the key was away.
The crowning discovery occurred 2 days later.
On a search for some old juniper specimens reputedly hidden in a deep
gorge, we came across a site which exceeded our expectations. Like a
'lost world' not only were there old juniper clinging to the side of
a steep slope of a U-shaped bowl, but at the leading end of this
feature, a waterfall plunged 100feet hiding a spectacular array of
caves. 
Walking behind the waterfall was like entering a museum of
ecclesiastical architecture, tombs and living geology. The actual
cave that 2 stalagmites were reluctantly extracted from held many
more specimens which our chisels couldn't cope with. A rather smug
monk looked on and commented that God already knew about climate
reconstruction and that he (the monk) had been expecting us.
We then donned our helmets and flak jackets and headed north to Tesfay's (our guide) homeplace of Adigrat, only 35km from the war-front. An exciting black-out (which only we found exciting as the power usually failed at this time of day) and some bored-looking soldiers on leave from the front were the only indications that there was a war on. However, the unending lorry convoys meant that we were quite low down the pecking order when it came to fuel.
Hoping that we had come to build a dam and employ the whole village of Debla Seat, there was slight disappointment in the air as we produced our famine-foods questionnaires. The results of this proved that yet again farmers had a wide knowledge of wild foods used in times of crisis, although there is also heavy reliance on food aid at these times.
You may have seen TV coverage of the present
"famines". These are happening in the SE of the country and although
this appears
to speak for the 'state of Ethiopia' the rest of the
country is enjoying plentiful rains at present. The ploughs are hard
at work and seeds are being sown.
The situation is actually much worse in Eritrea in terms of percentage of the population affected. In the famine-stricken area of Ethiopia, the Ogaden, it is important to note that these people are pastoralists and they only come into the towns when they are absolutely desperate i.e. lack of rain and crop failure are rarely the absolute causes of famine, rather, local politics and culture discourage appropriate intervention that could prevent a crisis.
With the fieldwork ended, we began our return to Addis. A 2-day journey via a more easterly route.
The brakes did fail. Disastrously. Negotiating
a steep hair-pin bend the driver lost control and the vehicle rolled
over. Climbing out of the wreckage we could see that a randomly
parked lorry had stopped us going over the cliff edge. We were
uninjured but the tree-cores were looking fairly crushed.
Out came the satellite phone…
We got back to Addis on schedule. After a long and tiring journey the sight of the Hilton lobby was uplifting to say the least. Room 708 is housing an unusual collection of samples, where for now they are safe.
Next week we will be having a press conference about the results of the fieldwork and the future phases of Ethiopian Venture…
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