Travel report May/June 2003

In May/June 2003, Stefanie Christmann, chairwoman of Eritrea Donkeys, visited three project areas in Eritrea: Gash-Barka, the Northern Red Sea Province and Anseba. As always, the journey was financed privately.

The entire region has been suffering from drought. In the rural regions, the women now have to go twice to the river to collect the amount of water they normally were able to collect in one journey. Also, several of the women now additionally feed straw and even grain to the donkeys. Many women are presently using their donkeys to transport food aid from the distribution centre to their homes. Again, I was impressed how the women put their donkeys to a variety of uses.

Role models show the way

The women of the first allocation years are now acting as role models. Those who will now receive a donkey know women who have freed themselves from poverty. In June 2001, Fatna Said (Tigrean) was the only woman in Afabet and surroundings who built her own house (see travel report 2001). By now, several women of the Afabet region have achieved the same.

Even Kadija Mahmoud (Tigrean) has built a house - she is a grandmother looking after several grandchildren all by herself after the generation in between had died. In 2001, she and the three children lived surrounded by low walls of piled stones covered by a black plastic sheet. Or Hadija Hamad Ahmad (Tigrean): This 37-year old mother of three had nothing in 2000, only the donkey she received from the Women's Union. Instead of weaving mats as she used to (earning 1-2 Nafka/day), she started trading water. Since then, she has built a large house, purchased a goat and a hen, which has already produced nine chickens. She intends to keep the hens and to sell the cocks and eggs (one egg sells for 0.80-1.00 Nafka). All her children go to school.

As soon as the drought is over, the women in Afabet who received their donkeys in November 2002 want to begin saving money and building houses. Some have already started and one of them, 40-year old Fatna Ali Mohamed (Tigrean, three children) has already moved into her newly built home.

Photograph without headscarf

Fatna Said still lives on trading water. She is especially proud of the fact that she was able to finance her oldest daughter's wedding last year. This is very important in Eritrea for the bride's status in the new family. The younger daughter still goes to school.

For her daughters, Fatna Said, who, in the 1990s obtained a divorce because her husband married a second wife, has made up for all the disadvantages usually encountered by daughters of single parents. She is highly respected. When I wanted to take her picture in 2001, she covered her face with a shawl. This time, she asked me to photograph her without the headscarf.

In Adi Teklezan, Birkti Mussurgski (Tigrean, three children) built a house with walls painted inside and out, a corrugated sheet iron roof and gutters. She now owns a male donkey, a donkey pony and her mare is again in foal. Her neighbour, Regat Kobrum (Tigrean) has just moved into her new home with a corrugated sheet iron roof. The building of her house is an almost unthinkable achievement since she is the single parent of eight school going children in need of food, clothing and school equipment.

All is planned

As always, the women first want to buy sufficient food for their families having lived on tea, sugar and dry bread or gruel for years. But unlike the early days of the project, the women now already envisage a plan and a target on the day they receive their donkey.

Take Hiwet Haile (Tigrean, three children): This woman, weighing maybe 40 kg, intends to earn enough money from the water trade to open a tea house and restaurant. She named her donkey "Senait" - happiness.

This year, I was present for the first time when a donkey was allocated (to Hiwet Haile). Never before had I seen a person experience so much joy as Hiwet did. Incidentally, all of the donkeys have names such as "Help", "Future", "Reliability" etc.

An orchard in the desert

The women are developing new ideas on how to use their donkeys. Nesrit Abubaku (Bilen, 40 years old, three children) lives in the mountain village of Metkelabi This village two hours on foot from Halhal which is reached via 40 km of gravel track off the tarmac road. As there was no other source of income, Nesrit was selling wood and water - even before she received her donkey. She carried it all on her back. It took her one and a half hours to reach the watering place - an immense drudgery for 2 Nafka/day.

Now she is using her donkey to sell wood and grass - and her earnings are much better. Her real project, however, is a large orchard; she has purchased seedlings, which she waters twice a day with the help of her donkey. Four guava trees have come on successfully despite the drought.

She says she will be able to harvest the first fruit in four years time. She intends to transport the fruit on her donkey to the market and sell it herself so that she can keep all her earnings. She wants to grow other types of fruit trees and is looking forward to one day living off the sale of her own fruit.

Hopefully soon a regular second project: donkeys as midwife taxis

If donations continue to increase, the Women's Union will not be able to find enough donkey mares for the available money. However, donkey mares are much more useful to single mothers than male donkeys.

We have therefore come to the following agreement with the Women's Union: If in June 2004 donations exceed the number of available donkey mares, the remaining money is to be used to purchase male donkeys suitable for riding to be used by midwives in rural areas (incl. married midwives). These riding donkeys will be provided for free, first in Gash-Barka, then in the Northern Red Sea Province, Anseba and the Southern Red Sea Province.

Often, midwives are the only medically trained people in a catchment area of three to five hours by foot. Due to the prevailing poor conditions of nutrition and health of pregnant women and the almost invariably practised genital mutilation, many women suffer greatly in childbirth.

45 degrees and no shade

Here, 710 of 100,00 women die at birth (in Western nations: 1 in 10,000). Approximately every 20th woman dies giving birth - in fact, in Barka it is every 10th woman. Many women in rural areas must give birth alone or assisted by untrained family members because the midwife is unable to arrive in time.

Midwives always travel by foot - in the summer at 45 degrees in the shade. However, there is hardly any shade in Eritrea due to the lack of trees. Riding donkeys to be used as taxis would alleviate the midwives' workload and improve the survival and the health of women. This idea comes from Tsega Tesfamariam, the midwife in Bushuka (see travel report 1998).

The midwives, called "traditional obstetricians" in Eritrea, have been qualified by the Ministry of Health in obstetrics and trained by the Women's Union in education on genital mutilation, HIV and birth control.