Post before trip to Jijiga to visit refugee camps

It’s been a while since we’ve updated our blog and we apologize. We
are now into our 5th week here in Ethiopia and have been working
diligently as well as finally exploring another part of the country.

This past weekend we visited Langano, a lake about 3 hours outside of
Addis. Myself, Kate, Hanna, and our co-worker Fre all went together
and rented a car and driver, as none of us can drive here. We left
Saturday morning after a nice cup of coffee at the Ethiopian Starbucks
“Kaldis”. Leaving the city we were able to see another part of Addis
and begin to get a glimpse of the countryside. As our drive continued
we started driving through more rural Ethiopia. Houses along the road
were constructed in a traditional fashion with a circular base and
thatched roof top. Small boys and men with sticks walked alongside
the road herding cattle and sometimes donkeys or sheep. Lining the
road was an endless scene of small trees spaced out across the brown
earth. The deforestation that is occurring throughout Ethiopia has
caused the landscape to become barren as people cut down the trees for
firewood to cook their meals.

We are currently preparing for our trip to Jijiga and the camps in
the area. We were suppose to leave Thursday, however due to several
factors that contributed to resources not being available we have
changed our plane tickets last minute to Monday morning. We will be
in the Somali region of Ethiopia for 7 days and will be spending our
nights in Jijiga and traveling between Kebrebeyah, Awabere (Teferi
Ber), and Sheder refugee camps. We have a very busy schedule for our
week in the western part of the country and are implementing several
programs while we are in the refugee camps. We will first begin with
our emergency intervention to provide kerosene to refugees in Awabere
refugee camp, as UNHCR is highly in need of an organization to take on
this role.

We had expected to be able to bring the kerosene stove we
chose from our efficiency testing; however, there are none in stock in
Addis, so we are going to continue the kerosene distribution without
them and implement the improved stoves at a later date. We are
planning to work with UNHCR to also distribute 25 parabolic solar
stoves each in Kebrebeyah, Awabere, and Sheder refugee camps. We will
distribute the stoves and provide training on how to use the stoves
properly. We will also be conducting an energy consumption survey in
the camps to investigate fuel consumption with charcoal, kerosene, and
ethanol stoves. This will help Gaia Association determine how much of
each fuel should be provided to the refugees depending on family size
and an estimated total energy consumption of the camps. We will also
be working to conduct controlled cooking tests in Kebreybeha and
Awabere to determine fuel consumption in the local setting.
We will provide cooks in the refugee camps with local food and ask them to
cook the food and we will gather all the necessary calculations to
look at fuel consumption within a given cooking time. At this time we
also will be measuring household and personal CO levels.
Along with all these tasks we plan to initiate a retained heat cooker
project in the two camps. We plan to distribute 10 haybaskets in
Kebreybeha camp along with the parabolic stoves and the other 20
baskets in Teferi Berr to be paired with the kerosene stoves. This
project is intended to cut cooking time by placing a hot pot with rice
or other food into a basket and letting it slowly cook, much like a
crock pot. We hope that there is a good response from the refugee
women, but it is a new project so we will see how they accept the
baskets.
We also will be talking to a local save the environment
organization and preparing a tree planting project for the refugees.
Another task will be to gather testimonials from the refugee families
regarding the CleanCook stove and ethanol interruption. We will use
these testimonials for Project Gaia and Gaia Association in order to
communicate with the public more about the refugees so others can get
a better glimpse of what their lives are like.

The trip to Jijiga will be a learning experience for all of us going
on the trip. We hope to complete most of our tasks and are prepared
to get a glimpse of development work at the grassroots level.

**disclaimer: My apologies for posting this late, Meg sent it to me but the email was lost in my spam-- here it is a little late but no worse for the wear! Megan and Kate are safely back after a busy and eventful trip... stay tuned for their post-trip musings...Brady