Many of us want to help reduce the poverty in Ethiopia, whether we are visitors or Ethiopians. We also love to explore the delightful spectrum of human culture that this fascinating nation has to offer. Sadly though, we often confront a wall of resentment and demands for cash from local people that see little benefit from tourism. This is not their fault either, but it can put really you off. It's clear that tourism has great potential benefit local communities through spin-offs including employment, access to training and promotion of indigenous micro-businesses for products and services for tourists. But in this area Ethiopia lags behind other African counties, leading to community alienation, which can ruin the experience for guests and negatively impacts on the industry, removing the chance for the community to get any benefits at all.
In The Konso Special Woreda, Southern Ethiopia, one project, The Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge (SFEL), seeks to change this. SFEL's mission is to tie tourism and community development activism together, delivering tangible community benefit from tourism.
The lodge, built in the local style by local people, offers comfortable accommodation with a Konso twist. A series of community based "Cultural Immersion Programs" encourage visitors to interact more deeply with the local society. Guests receive a series of lectures and briefings about Konso's fascinating history, language, agriculture, ethno-botany, customs and culture, lead by local community members, and are intersperced with workshops on traditional skills such as pottery, weaving, and stone-wall terracing. Following this treks to the villages take in a range of community based activities including dance, music and crafts, cultural and spiritual sites, local architecture and agriculture and a pantheon of stunning of views of the Great Rift Valley.
The Konso people are an industrious farming culture, populating a rugged basalt outcrop strung from east to west across the bowl of the Great Rift Valley. Surrounded by warlike nomads on three sides, their quaint little civilisation is the final outpost of settled agriculture as one descends into the arid badlands of Borena and the Omo valley. Their little hilltop villages are not dissimilar from those of the Kelts in Roman Britain; ringed by rough hewn walls of stone, constructed purely from natural materials and paved with the black rock of the earth around them. Konso land is poor quality, steeply sloping and cut by deeply eroded canyons. Rain is unreliable. These harsh conditions have bred what some call the toughest farmers in Africa.
Konso's famous dry-stone terracing, constructed by centuries of communal labour, covers great tracts of the landscape allowing them to yield crops of sorghum and Moringa, intercropped with pigeon peas, beans and cassava, just enough to fulfill their needs… as long as the rains don't fail.
And when the guests surmount those terraced hills, to the highland villages of Konso, they will greet the locals in their own tongue, and behaving as befits the manners of the local civilisation. By participating in community based activities, they will offer income to the society at the grass roots level.
Yet SFEL's agenda goes beyond this. It also offers training in Permaculture, an integrated resource management system for sustainable human living which encompasses the design of nutrition gardens, nursery establishment and reforestation with productive agro-forest for community needs, seed bank operation, soil building for ecological conservation integrated with food production. For impoverished farming communities it answers the Siamese twin calamities of food insecurity and environmental degradation as well as the design of solutions to unnecessary labour, especially important for African women.
Permaculture is about sustaining life and livelihoods and the rewards for Konso, struggling under the burden of drought and food shortages are potentially vast. Strawberry Fields houses the first demonstration Permaculture farm in Ethiopia. The farm produces delicious fresh food for the lodge's restaurant, but also serves as a model for Permaculture training, given for local community, local organizations and foreign participants who's fees fund the training of local people. All participating groups have the chance to share ideas and experiences along the way. SFEL's resident Permaculture design trainer, Mr Tichafa Makovere, a veteran Permaculturalist from Zimbabwe, was at the forefront of the movement's development in Southern Africa. He now spearheads the development of the movement in Ethiopia and with SFEL intends to lead an Ethiopian delegation to attend the Global Permaculture Convergence in Malawi, November 2009.
We at SFEL invite you to participate. Come and reach out to the community of Konso, a unique people, perpetually cheerful, singularly proud of their fascinating culture and relentless in their toil to see the simple tasks of daily life achieved. Konso is a land of stunning beauty but harsh reality. Strawberry Fields offers you a chance to enjoy Konso and put something back at the same time, whether you are a development activist or just a tourist who wants contribute a little through your enjoyment; SFEL wishes to say "Ogado!" Welcome to the magical land of Konso!
SFEL runs its next Permaculture Design Certificate training from 18th - 31st January 2009. 8 places are open to guest participants. The course fee for Ethiopian residents is ETB3000 and for non residents $750 (or equivalent in UKP, ETB or Euro) and includes food and accommodation on the site for 13 days. Contact us for information on more sessions or any other questions you may have.
Contact for more information: 0913 54 41 64 or 0912 21 46 87. Email at alex1mcc@yahoo.com .
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Good Work written by Kirsty Barnby , February 26, 2009
