Faces I'll remember

A pottery vendor at the market

A little boy who gave me flowers

A woman carrying goods to market for miles down a mountain

Flora -- teaching us about climate change
through song and dance

A few photos -- Addis Street Scenes

Street lights in the city haven't worked since last winter. We saw only4 or 5 that did

A typical street
Returning from the market after shopping. Everyone walks in the street

One of the many vendors selling a few vegetables on street corners

Near the main tourist market

A side street near our hotel

Long flight home

We are on the last leg of the flight home, sitting in Dulles waiting for the shuttle. Security has been amazingly tight all along the way. Several layers of security at Addis Ababa Airport to go through--not all that surprising, really. But, when we landed in Frankfurt, the plane was on an apron that seemed to be miles (literally) from the terminal and we were bused to the terminal. The buses are pretty common in Frankfurt, but this was really far out and German police were at the plane to check the ID of everyone before we disembarked. It clearly felt like they were looking for someone.

Still more layers of security within the Frankfurt airport to clear before we caught our connection on to DC. Now it's home to sleeeeeep.

Addis Ababa University Library visit

Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We visited AAU today. It is by far the largest of the libraries we have seen so far. The University itself has 40,000 students. The main library is the John F Kennedy Library, and there are 12 branch libraries spread around the central campuses and at campuses scattered around the city and surrounding areas—up to 25 km away. Some are special mission campuses, such as the Medical School; others are more general such as the campus that caters more to the science faculty.

The director comes from an IT rather than a library background, which seems to be the pattern here. Perhaps that isn’t an entirely bad thing. Their libraries do need a lot of updating the in the area of technology – and they are working very hard to do that.

AAU still has a card catalog, and they showed us the tech processing unit where they were producing the cards to distribute to the branch libraries. It is a central processing operation with a “union catalog” for the entire system at the main library. They are in the process of automating and moving to an ILS using the KOHA system. They hope to make the transition in 3-4 months.

They provide a wide array of services and resources to their students. There are 30 electronic databases available including many of the ones we have (or want). They get their databases through a project called Perii-INASP http://www.inasp.info/ that provides resources to developing countries. These are resources that are available to all universities in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, as a country, pays a single fee. These include resources like JStor, Project Muse, T&F journals, and a bunch of others. It also includes document delivery service from the British Library. So they are building resources, the challenge seems to be getting the word out to researchers that these resources are available (sound familiar?)

They also have 3 computer labs in the library. Most impressive were the services they have for the visually impaired students. They have a lab with equipment to read text and other software, special reading rooms, and Braille collections. It’s clear they are investing quite a bit of time and energy in this service. They have about 200 or so visually impaired students, including quite a few graduate students. We met and spoke briefly with a visually impaired PhD student working on a degree in English as a Foreign Language.

Other initiatives included electronic texts and reserves services, wireless service throughout the libraries, and electronic theses and dissertations. All-in-all, we were impressed with the work they are doing. They have limited resources and yet they are providing excellent services within the limits of those resources.

After we finished at the library we were able to visit the Ethiopian Studies Institute on campus. It is housed in the Emperor Haile Selassie’s palace which is part museum (the best in Ethiopia by far), houses an excellent library with strengths in Ethiopian language and culture, and the university administrative offices. They are building a new facility that will house the library, and a separate facility for the admin offices leaving the old palace as a museum.

The visit was a good end to our trip to Ethiopia. Now back to the hotel for a few hours rest before we head to the airport and a long flight home.

Playing tourist

Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

Last night Sylvia and I played tourist. Our friend Maese took us out to an Ethiopian "cultural" restaurant for dinner and to see traditional dancing. The food was wonderful, served traditionally, communal style on injera flatbread. While the "fasting" foods are usually served only on Wednesday and Saturday, the kitchen was able to accommodate us and we had a wonderful meal. While I like the meat dishs, like Sylvia, I think the Ethiopian cuisine really shines when it comes to vegetarian foods.

The dancing was amazing. How do they make those moves! I was dragged up on stage to dance. Those photos will never see the light of day

UN ECA

Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We had a chance to visit the UN Economic Commission for Africa today. The trip to the UN compound alone would have been worth a trek across Addis. That side of town in many ways is different. Lots of construction going on; large shiny new buildings going up, which is perhaps a good thing in a city that clearly needs development. But, why do they all seem to be banks? Along the way though, you still see people trying to do their laundry in the broken water mains. It is still tough to survive on the streets of Addis even in the high rent district. Lots of security at the UN gates but we pass through to the library easily enough.

The library itself is in rather modest quarters, though they seem to have enough space for their needs. They serve the diplomatic and UN office staffs first, but also reach out and try and serve other constituencies like NGOs and national government policymakers. They also reach out to university students and scholars in Africa to make their resources accessible. For the UN this is a fairly broad view of what their mandate should be.

They have some fairly aggressive programs in place to digitize materials as well and are actively working on a digital repository that will be open access. There is clearly a desire to make their materials more widely accessible. In Africa this is difficult because the limited availability of broadband means electronic is not necessarily the best solution. Yet paying for both print and online is enormously expensive. They are doing a lot in difficult circumstances and like any big organization it takes time to get things done when you fight against a bureaucracy all the time.

A few more conversations

Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We have met so many Ethiopians who have relatives in the United States it gives you a sense of the brain drain that must be happening in the this country. We’ve been befriended by a woman, Maese, who has two sisters in the United States; one has a husband who is a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic another is a PhD engineer working in Maryland. This country needs people with high level skills so badly. We talked to an Ethiopian in State College who spoke about how many of his countrymen had left Ethiopia and how badly they were needed back home. Here’s one real example. Maese and her husband have stayed here. He runs and engineering company, she’s an accountant.

We spent some time with the Librarian at the UN ECA today. More about the visit later but the part of the conversation that struck me was her perspective on Addis Ababa. She’s new to the city—here about 4 months, having transferred from UN Regional Offices in Santiago, Chile. She commented on the huge disparity between the rich and the poor in Addis, particularly noting how different life is for those in the international community in Addis compared to locals. She said she pays more in rent here, as an international employee, than she pays for her mortgage on her house in Kansas. When we told her that we had been to Makelle she also commented on how different that city was from Addis and that there was actually a middle class there that you didn’t see in Addis. On some level it was nice to have my own reactions affirmed.

And then, there have been the conversations our guide. I haven’t decided quite what to make of him. I’m grateful for all the help he’s given us. It’s allowed me to see parts of Ethiopia that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. But he’s always looking for an angle, a way to make a little extra money off his interactions with us. On one level, I can’t say I blame him. We are a job for him and he has a family. You have to hustle to make a living in this country. But I don’t get the feeling when I’ve talked with him that I have gotten to know him and his family. He talks about wanting to set up a business but can’t give any clear idea of what that business is. He says he needs someone to sponsor his two young boys (age 3 and 4) in school. But I can’t really get a feel for his family. What is the truth? I’d like to help but I'm not sure how the money would get used. Right now I think I will probably go back home without making any promises And, I feel a little guilty about 2 little boys who might not get the education they deserve.

Oral traditions and libraries

I've been gratified by how much interest there has been in Sylvia's work on Oral traditions and libraries. I wasn't surprised, I actually expected that to be the case, but it has been great to seen the enormous interest by such a wide range of people at the conference. She was interviewed by a number of people, including a renowned local journalist Pius Sawa. Mr. Sawa is a young Ugandan journalist who has already won British journalism awards for his work with child soldiers in Africa. If you google his name and Radio Sapientia you will see a lot of his work.

But it is clear the Sylvia's call for libraries to incorporate the use of traditional methods of oral communication rather than relying on the western model of print collections struct a cord with people attending the conference. It shows the power of librarians listening to needs of their local constituencies, whether they are undergraduate students at Penn States or local farmers in Africa. We can make ourselves relevant if we listen hard enough.

So many conversations

Most of the times when I hear people talk about their travels, it is about the sights they have seen and things they have done. It’s a wonderful part of travel. But to me the people I meet and the conversations I have are the most rewarding and interesting part of traveling. Some conversations are lengthy, some fleeting but they all leave me feeling I know a little more about the places I am visiting. So in some of the next few post I will highlight a few of the conversations I will remember most from this trip—in no particular order.

Flora – Flora is an amazing woman, a farmer from Kenya who is educating her fellow farmers on climate change. She’s clearly a woman on a mission who’s in charge of her world. Strength of character and fortitude for all women to emulate. We met at a climate change workshop at the conference and sat together at lunch along with another farmer from Kenya, We talked about her work with fellow farmers trying to educate their neighbors on climate change and how to combat it day to day in their farming. She does it through song and dance with a passion you can see in her eyes and hear in her voice. African oral traditions in practice.

Kiarahu, a rather elderly Kenyan farmer who was so proud of his life’s accomplishments and how he is now trying to help the next generation achieve the same success with sustainable farming methods. He showed us his “laptop” computer. A photograph album and notebook where he has documented the growth of his own farm from barren savannah to flourishing farm and the notebook where he keeps the thanks he has received from the other farmers he has helped.

These were what many people would call “simple” farmers, and they aren’t the researchers and scientists, but they are people who are making a real on the ground difference. And there is a generosity of spirit that comes through and touches your heart when you talk with Flora and her friend.

There was our dinner with the faculty at Mekelle University where conversation ranged from poetry to politics. Like all academics they have a passion for their discipline and like nothing better than to talk about it. And we had dinner with a faculty member from Social Sciences (where they have the literature and history departments), a historian, a physicist (he also runs the library and ICT) and the Dean of the college that has the library school (he is also a physics professor). But they talked about the war, and when you listen to them you can feel how close to the surface those memories and emotions are and how quickly they could surface again. They blame Italy for inflaming ethnic tensions between two groups they see as one people.

There were the conversations at the conference where so many attendees wanted to know why the US won’t do more about climate change. I didn’t have an answer for them except that the US has some very stupid politicians don’t believe it is real. This makes no sense to people who feel they see the real effects in the day to day lives. Of course, it makes no sense to me either.

There was the conversation in the airport with a former diplomat with FAO who wanted so much to understand what was going on in American politics right now (don’t we all). He said he was so hopeful when Obama was elected and it did so much for US standing around the world and that it was sad to see that eroding. And, as an economist with FAO and had strong views on the need for the US to understand the need to adjust to a standard of living that was more sustainable for the sake of the rest of the world. I confess when I’m here and I see the poverty around me---I agree, we have much, much more than we need.

Building walls

I had an interesting conversation at lunch today with someone at ILRI. She asked what I thought about my trip. She was from the UK but had been working in Addis for several years, affiliated with the Anglican Church.

I said I had mixed feelings. The people were wonderful and had been very warm and hospitable and that I had met many people who were doing wonderful work trying to improve lives in Africa. But, that I was dismayed by the depth of the poverty I saw around me. She seemed surprised that I thought things were that bad. That took me aback.

I’m not naïve. I spent years working in clinics for severely malnourished children in Latin America and in some of the poorest villages in Honduras. I know you need to build a wall around your emotions in order to work effectively in those conditions. But, there is a difference between building a wall between your emotions and your work and putting up blinders to the problems around you.

Do people manage their lives so they can ignore the poor around the? ILRI is a world apart. Tennis courts, swimming pool, aprivate clinic (which I confess I took advantage of). I can’t help but wonder if people don’t just isolate themselves from what is going on around here. Is there another explanation?

post conference

We are back at ILRI (the International Livestock Research Institute) this morning to meet with Azeba the librarian here. She manages the small library that serves a pretty diverse clientele. Not only the Institute staff but about 2500 local ag students and researchers use the facilities. They take advantage of the online collections, particularly the online journals and the internet connection here at the institute.
This is really the only place I've had real broadband access since we've arrived.

Azeba is also arranging our library visits to the other libraries in Addis on Monday and Tuesday. We hope to go to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Food and Agriculture Organization, and Addis Ababa University where the library school is located. They should be interesting visits.

last day

It's the last day of the formal conference though there are still some things happenning tomorrow.

Our session was this morning and I think it went well. It generated lots of discussion and Sylvia in particular was in high demand after the session for interviews. It's clear that her take on libraries at the local level using less print and tailoring the services more to local needs of African communities really stuck a cord with many community development workers at the conference. Researchers were more interested in what I had to say.

Of all the presentations I saw the ones that struct home most with me were ones from the farmers themselves. One by Flora Nzambuli using song to teach about climate change. Very moving.

There were so many dedicated people doing such a wide variety of work all across africa. Many work under very difficult circumstances. There is a lot to take away from the conference and it will take a while to process it.

I missed one of the closing sessions -- spent it at the locall clinic. Nothing serious but I'm beginning to think I like these little episodes. While waiting for the lab results I spent the time with a little boy who spoke very little English but who is learning it in school and we spent the time drawing pictures and writing the words in Amharic and English. A big hug and kiss when we parted. The simple joy and laughter of encounters like this renews my faith in people.

Tomorrow we come back and will spend some time with the librarian here and talk to here about her work at ILRI.

The conference

Wed 10/20
We returned to Addis from Makele yesterday evening. The contrast between cities is very stark. The poverty in Addis is even more striking after being away for a few days. Today was our first day at the conference.

This is our first day on the ILRI campus It is really beautiful. A world apart from the city. And, it's the first day I actually have been able to get on the blog directly! Heather has been doing posting for me up till now.

The first session was on knowledge management. It was interesting because what most of the participants think of as knowledge management I as a librarian would think of more as knowledge creation -- at least to the point of publication. Then the managment part comes into play. Talking to people here requires a different mind set. They really stop thinking long before the library comes into play. For most of them they haven't really thought about the library as a player in knowledge management. A scary thought for our profession.

The other rather startling thing, these are professionals who are supposedly serving rural farmers in africa but the small farmers here that we sat with at lunch that clearly feel these folks are talking way past them as well. One woman from Kenya, got up and said that directly and was taken very seriously. A good sign that they are listening at least.

It's interesting to be at a non-library conference, and at a conference that is only about 200 people. Great fun to get to know people. Tonight there is a barbacue with music and dance.

However, right now there I need to get off the internet. They need the room.

Makele

Monday 10/18 – Posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

We were up at 4am today to get to the airport for a 6:30 flight to Makale. We go to Mekelle University (have to ask them why there is a difference in the spelling!). The idea was to talk to them about the CIKARD Indigenous knowledge collection and consult with them generally about library collaboration.

I was struck from the air when we flew out of Addis how green and fertile the land around Addis seemed. It certainly seemed to be under cultivation. You certainly don’t get that feel from within the city confines. Driving around the city you don’t seem much in the way of corner vegetable markets that are common in most cities in Latin America and developing countries I've visited before, only a very few scattered here and there. Not sure what that means. What I know of Ethiopian cuisine vegetables are key so I would expect them to be pretty common—if they are affordable.

Landing in Makele was like landing in another country. The air was fresh and clean. This is clearly agricultural country though it seems a sizable small city as well. And booming. Construction is everywhere. If Addis feels like it is dying, Makele feels like it is thriving. The University is expanding rapidly and perhaps that accounts for some of it. There are 3 campuses in the city, the most recent being where we went first. This is home to the Social Sciences and Business schools. The define Social Sciences quite broadly to include literature and history!

They are struggling to set up their libraries—saying they have a shoestring budget would leave you with the impression they have some money to work with. They pretty much have our subject libraries model. Each of their colleges has a departmental library with central administration. With 3 campuses spread over the city (there is a lot of open land here I’m not sure why they divided up the campus they way the did). It isn’t possible to have a single library but they really only have one “librarian” with any training—has a bachelors. The rest of the “librarians” have about 2 weeks training—which seems to be the equivalent of what we give shelvers—and they are sent out to manage the libraries.

They know this is awful, but there aren’t any trained librarians to be had, or the money to hire them. The school has just started a bachelors degree in library science and the first students matriculated this week. Faculty to teach have not yet arrived from India!?

The University is definitely a work in progress, but the operative word here is progress. This seems to be a young, eager faculty, very much wanting to make a difference working in a city that is in sharp contrast to Addis.

What a difference a day – and a plane ride -- makes.

Culture Shock

Sunday 10/17 - posted by Heather Ross for Helen via email

So, I debated how to write this blog entry but decided that if I was going to write it at all I was going to be honest about what I was seeing and feeling so … here goes.

Addis has been pretty overwhelming. I expected some “culture shock” . There always is some getting used to a different country, but Ethiopia has been different. I’ve always been able to see more positives than negatives than negatives in the places I’ve visited. That’s been hard to say here.

We went out today for a couple of hours and saw the cathedral that was used by the Emperor Haile Selasi (need to check the spelling) and it is quite beautiful and in stark contrast to the poverty and misery outside its doors. We literally walked past one young man lying on the street about 200 yards from the church, there were people standing around who our guide tried to assure us were just trying to help because he “was having a seizure”. Well, I have seen enough of both seizures and death to know for certain this young man was dead and the officials standing around weren’t trying to help. Not much further along there was another homeless person also lying by the side of the road, cars rushing by within inches of him and no one was paying attention to him.

The desperately poor are everywhere here to a degree I’ve never seen before—anywhere I’ve ever been. And worse, there isn’t any sense of hope that I can feel. No sense of joy anywhere. Don’t get me wrong. The people are wonderful. Warm, generous, hospitable…everything you could ask for in hosts when you visit their country. You wonder how they can maintain that attitude. And they are a proud people. They have such a rich cultural history.

But that’s the problem. It’s history. Or at least it feels like that in Addis. There isn’t any sense of hope or optimism in this city.

Sylvia and I are really tired. Neither of us could sleep and spent much of the night talking about the poverty in Addis and how bleak it feels here. She says it is worse than anything she has seen in Africa. On some level I find that reassuring—that it’s not just an overreaction on my part. Thinking about the years of civil war, the famines… they have left their mark on this country.

Arrival

The trip over was very long—25 hours door to door. And there weren’t that many layovers. We just about sprinted through the Frankfurt airport, got to the gate and they were already boarding. Of course we were pulled out of line for takeoff and brought back for additional maintenance. I’m not complaining, though. They could have discovered the problem half way over the Atlantic.

Saturday was spent recovering and adjusting to Addis and the best way to get adjusted to a new time zone is to spend time outside so we went to local market and to see some local sights. Thankfully, we had a contact here who arranged a guide for us. I’m not sure we would want to try and navigate this city on our own.

The city is enormous and sprawls over the surrounding hills. Traffic is crazy. I haven’t seen a traffic light yet. Our guide, Yared, says they do exist, but there is no electricity. The poverty and homelessness here is truly striking, I’ve worked with the poorest of the poor in Latin America but the poverty here seems deeper and more pervasive than anything I encountered there even in the barrios of San Pedro Sula or the very rural areas of Mexico and Honduras. In Latin America you could see pockets of middle class prosperity and some signs of progress. I don’t see that here. Sylvia says I need to look beyond the first layers of houses at the edge of the road and I will see those signs of the middle class—behind first walls of shanty houses. I’ll have to look a little closer.

Addis is home to the major UN agenies—the ECA is headquartered here and most of the major IGO and NGOs work out of Addis so I expected to see a more developed central district. It’s the largest city in Ethiopia, Even the areas by the government buildings have clearly been devastated by the years of war.

People here have been wonderfully warm, gracious, and welcoming. And we couldn’t be happier with our trip so far.

I’m writing this blog offline and will post later. We’ve been told there is no internet today. It ‘s Sunday.

wrapping up loose ends

Tomorrow Sylvia and I leave for AgKnowledge Share Fair Conference and our visit to Mekelle University in Ethiopia. More on how that came about later. Six week ago I had no idea I would be going to Ethiopia. It has been quite a rush to get everything done.

Today has been a day for wrapping up loose ends. Finishing up presentations, making copies of materials we need to take with us, going to the bank. All the last minute travel details. Now it is home to pack!

This is my first attempt at blogging. We'll see how it goes. And, I guess, we'll see how much internet access we have in Ethiopia as well!

Helen