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Voices from the desert: living with desertification
Testimonials from poor rural people in Ethiopia and Sudan
“During my childhood the grass was the height of a person,” Diramo says. “Now, the shortage of water and grass has led to the emaciation of cattle; we have nowhere to go. Our life is tied to our cattle. When the cattle are fat, we get fat; when they are emaciated, we too lose weight”. Diramo’s story is one of many collected by the Desert Voices project run by Panos London, an international nongovernmental organization. Through the project, poor rural men and women talked to local journalists about their lives in areas hit by drought and desertification. Desert Voices was funded by an IFAD grant to mark the International Year of Deserts and Desertification in 2006. Duba also lives in Ethiopia with his two wives and twelve children. “We have resorted to giving [the children] tea, which we never knew of before,” he says. “My child has been drinking tea since she was born. There are lots of problems when they [only] drink tea. Their abdomens swell, their bones don’t become strong”. Forty-five-year-old El Emam from Sudan has been forced to travel to find work to support his family. “There is no income here,” he says. “In the past, when people’s situations were good, there were cows, sheep, goats and good agriculture. But from 1984 the drought finished our animal wealth and the encroachment of the desert finished the agriculture.”
Twenty-two-year-old Sayda is a voluntary teacher in Sudan. “We depend on those who migrate to the cities,” she says. “Seventy-five per cent of the village’s youth are migrants working in the cities because there is no agriculture or pasture here…” These powerful stories are part of a series of 20 testimonials from rural areas, illustrating the devastating long-term results of desertification – poverty, hunger, conflict and forced migration. Together with songs, photos and feature articles, they are now online on the Panos website. Panos worked with local print and photo journalists and community development workers to collect the testimonies. “One of the main aims of the Desert Voices project was to increase public understanding and awareness of the impact of desertification,” says Keren Ghitis, the project coordinator. “To do this properly means listening to the voices and stories of those who are most affected.” Panos has distributed Desert Voices to over 5,000 contacts worldwide. Source: IFAD |
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Diramo is 70. She lives in the village of Siminto in Ethiopia where she was born. She grew up as a herder, moving with her family’s animals to find water and food, feeding her children with the milk and meat. But now the abundant grasslands that the cattle fed on are gone and the people are no longer able to migrate in search of pasture. They grow what crops they can but droughts are frequent.
Chuqulisa from Ethiopia is divorced and supports her six children by selling firewood. “It is during acute droughts that we enter into conflict with other clans,” she says. “It is during this time that the Boran wander with their animals in search of pasture and water. A group called the Digodi moves around with the same purpose… The two groups clash, [both] claiming the land is theirs. The conflict is so serious and it claims many lives.”
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