In Addis Ababa, the smell of smoke is everywhere. Many families in the city do all their cooking with wood, which means that Addis Ababa has a huge need for firewood.
The needed wood must be cut down outside the city and carried in. In Addis, around 15,000 women and children make their living as wood carriers, carrying huge bundles of wood into the city every day. In spite of the extremely arduous work, the women and children who do this work are some of the poorest people in the city. For one bundle they receive around 60 cents.
Dan Clendenin shares his observations of this in 2005. Here is a excerpt of what he writes:
“… our ascent from the city center at 7,000 feet to the summit at 11,000 feet. As our mini-van belched clouds of blue exhaust, the higher we went the more women and even girls we passed carrying loads of firewood on their backs down the mountain. Bent over at the waist, often barefooted, these women carried seventy-five pound bundles of eucalyptus saplings, seven feet wide, back down to the city center about ten miles away, all for a few pennies. The women firewood carriers in Addis are, in fact, an all too common sight….
Addis Ababa’s need for wood is destroying the forests in the vicinity of Addis, causing people to have to walk further and further for wood. The World Bank and the Africa Development Fund, among others, are funding large tree-planting projects to address the shortage of wood.
Wood chopping is now illegal in many areas, adding to the difficulty that these women face. But still the women come, driven by desperation to feed their families. For many, this is their only source of income.
Many of these women do have other marketable skills, such as weaving. However, their poverty prevents them from being able to buy the materials needed to make things to sell.
The Ethiopian Women Fuel Wood Carriers Project is working to help solve some of the problems that these impoverished women face.
First of all, they are working to address the shortage of wood by planting new forests. Second, they are working to get these women new jobs: for example, they are outfitting impoverished women with weaving supplies so that they can make a living. And third, they are addressing health issues that these women and their families may have.
While you are in Addis, you may want to ask to be taken to the Women Fuel Carriers Project and Sherameeda,which is a large market of textile producers near the American Embassy. Purchases you make there will benefit the women trying to get out from under the burden of wood carrying.
While in Kenya recently we saw women burdened in the same way slogging in from the outskirts of the city. At one point, after commenting on the dearth of men so occupied, we did happen to spot one man “helping”…he was loading up an old woman just like he would a mule.
All over Africa…here in Seychelles, as well…men get off so much easier than the women.
What an interesting post – I enjoy reading things that help explain what we may see on our trip.
Has anyone seen/bought this fabric? I am going to Ethiopia to pick up my new children and, being a dedicated quilter, would love to bring back some fabric. And I would love to get some for the quilt store but I have to be sure its acceptable to quilt with.