Forum for Social Studies ... Publication...RURAL LANDS AND EVOLVING TENURE ARRANGEMENTS IN ETHIOPIA: Issues, Evidence and Policies Tesfaye Teklu

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Faces of Poverty : Life in Gata, Walo Harald Aspen

Abstract

Faces of Poverty tells the story of four families in Gäta, South Wälo and depicts their daily lives over a short period of time. The author spent a month in Gäta in 1998, when the area was struck by a long drought and recurrent crop losses. The stories are to a large extent in the words of the people who lived there, providing a rare glimpse of some of the humans behind the grim statistics of poverty and famine in Ethiopia. It is a story about poverty, vulnerability, bad health and lack of education, but most of all it is a story about people and their joys and sorrows, worries and hopes.

Faces of Poverty is written without expert jargon and without attempting to tell a representative story. Illustrated with photographs it makes an easy access to a few lives which certainly are similar with hundreds of thousands of others in rural Ethiopia. In Gäta, the effects of the killer famine of 1984 are still felt. A treacherous climate makes it difficult to rebuild stocks of grain and animals in a subsistence economy. Even relatively good years have “hungry months” when there is nearly nothing to eat. The four families, all of whom are related, may seem to be in an equally bad situation, but at a closer look they appear to be differently endowed with land, draught animals and labour. Past events, unequal ability to work and cyclic household developments, in addition to sheer luck or bad faith, have produced differences between the families and their members which are subtly expressed and dealt with in their daily interactions.

Gäta is a Muslim community with a long history, and it hosts one of the famous Muslim shrines in Wälo. The religion permeates the daily life and the festive occasions, such as the mäwäkäl of the oldest member of the little community, an elaborate ritual in honour of the ancestors and Allah. But also everyday activities are filled with blessings, such as the coffee ceremony, and the du’a sessions, in which the mildly narcotic ch’at is consumed in Allah’s honour.

Petty trade is a well established income-generating activity, and we follow the members of the Gäta families, mainly women, to the different weekly markets in the vicinity of Gäta – Kombolcha, Harbu, Ancharo and Adamé. A link to Komolcha, the district capital, is represented by the market and by a daughter who has settled there with her family to live on trade. Through her we also get a glimpse of the urban poverty, and the bonds of reciprocity between the urban and rural relatives.