The second installment
of our last day in Kembata Tembaro.
We made our way to
Mudula to meet with the local officials, visit the Degale library build site,
and further pin-down where we will be building next year’s KG/library.
Our first visit was with Ato Desta at the local worader office.
Ejigu and I have a long and positive history with Ato Desta, so it was nice to
catch up with him and his assistant. We spent nearly 40 minutes talking
through this year’s accomplishments and next year’s Mudula based projects.
Desta and his office are very supportive of the planned work, and our
proving to be the most reliable officials Ejigu and I have worked with to
date.
Since Ejigu and I's
first visit 6 months ago, Desta and ER have worked together deciding where the
One Moon KG will be placed. Through the
process we have made sure to involve many layers of the local community.
His office personnel, Ejigu and I have traveled to numerous
communities in the area to preform ER’s needs assessments. The process involves many steps, some of
which are visiting the community, meeting village elders and community leaders
to discuss demographics, population numbers, and land availability. We
have come to identify the obvious; KG's are needed everywhere. Thus
placement is critical.
Within 18 kms going
south of Mudula, there are 6 different communities ranging in size from 2-
4,000. We spent time in each of these communities and found that each's
population could nearly fill a KG on its own. Families from communities
like Koatana, Ferzano and Sigazoo seem to have 7 children on average, and those
children have next to no opportunities for early childhood education.
When the children reach the age of 5 or 6 they can then start making
the pilgrimage to either Mudula's 1-8 schools or Ferzano's.
The 12 or so km's between, offer nothing outside of a few scattered
locations for informal and irregular and preschool tutorials. The
need is everywhere... but available land is not.
Mudula and its
surrounding communities are snugly tucked within SW Ethiopia’s densely wooded
and farmed highlands. Open unused flat spaces are almost nonexistent, and
for good reason. Timber is coveted, and agriculture largely sustains the
families of the region. The few meda's (open
field) that do exist, are owned by a very select few that sadly have no
interest in giving up their prized grazing areas. Ideally the KG would be
located in between Ferzano and Mudula, but there is simply no where to build
but the schools 45- 40 meter (minimum) foot print. So ER, the worader office
and the south of Mudula communities are discussing whether the
best location is within Ferzano's very large 1-8 compound. We at ER feel
that the location meets all of our KG/library criteria, and the community and worader office
will finalize their own decision in next month’s mahabar (town
hall like meeting). I’ll be sure to share.
One thing to note
(because those familiar with how Ethiopia politics work are probably shaking
their head thinking the community will have little to say in such matters), Ato
Desta went out of his way to tell Ejigu and I that especially when working in
education, involving the community is key; because as he put it, without
popular community support any school will fail. A strong sentiment that
hits home with ERs field team.
We spent an hour
re-visiting the Ferzano school compound and meeting with school officials and
teachers. Plenty of the following photos will help you get a feel of the
potential site.
On the way out we also
made sure to visit the Degale library site. The land is ready to be
fenced in, and Ato Desta assured Ejigu and I there would be no issues in
starting that work before the raining season. Another very positive trip
to Mudula.
