In Ethiopia, many millions of people eke out a living for the bare necessities of life. They do this by harvesting their fields, looking after their herds, selling their products, doing some work for which they are paid on a daily basis.

The possibility of staying at home and surviving on what one has in storage simply does not exist for most people. Firstly, it is because there is not much to store, and added to that are the tiny spaces that make up their homes, which are clearly unsuitable for storing anything. In addition, the requirement of confinement is a near impossibility because many homes comprise of just one room or, at most, two tiny spaces separated by a wall!

Yesterday, we went to the market at Muketuri, the village where we live in the Ethiopian Highlands. It is a traditional market where little grain, fruit and vegetables are sold and bought; there are also clothes, accessories, household items but not much else. Despite insistent calls from the government for social distancing, the market was very crowded with people buying and selling. Really, what other choice do they have?

If only those who live in the rural areas could have water and vegetable plots where they could grow their own vegetables instead of relying on the trucks that supply the area which sometimes do not arrive. Again, that is not the case either. In many villages, water is still a very scarce commodity or one that can only be obtained by walking long distances. Opening the tap at home and seeing this element coming out is literally a chimera for many people here.

The only thing we can do, therefore, is to continue digging wells and distributing seeds to farmers so that the harvest season is not restricted to just three months per year.

And, above all, we need to REFLECT… so that, when normalcy returns and the imminent danger is over, we can think together about how to avoid the situation where so many human beings lie at the brink between life and death in a permanent and normative way. Maybe we can make that day come so that, when faced with a threat such as the Covid-19, we may all be able to isolate ourselves for a while so as to amortise the damage, and come out, as they say, stronger and not more impoverished, vulnerable or helpless.

The strength and comfort of Faith will be important to continue working for a more equitable world.

Lourdes Larruy, MCSPA.

In the tradition of the Oromo tribe in Ethiopia horses are adorned for the great celebrations of life: a wedding, a birth, a funeral… And now, the farmers of Abo Kaso wanted to celebrate by adorning their horses that they´ve got water thanks to the drilling of a well, as a sign of how important water is for life!

Last Friday, June 14, a hundred people waited on the main stone road for the vehicle of the members of the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle who live in Muketuri. From there several kilometers across the field to the place of the well a score of peasants on horseback surrounded the car and singing they started their typical dances that are done on the horse back. All of them with the coloured saddle with the motive of the Lion of Judah, a sign of Ethiopian culture.

These were sublime minutes! A vast landscape of the Ethiopian plateau, 3,000 meters above sea level, people hardened by poverty and cold, today, wrapped up in celebration: having a water tap has changed the lives of 68 families, more than 500 people!

When arriving at the place of the well the construction of a 4 meters high structure of reinforced concrete is glimpsed. A deposit of 10.000 liters is going to be placed there from where the gardens will be irrigated with a system of drip irrigation… When approaching to the place a group of women dancing and singing to the rhythm of their clapping hands receive us, next to the deposit they are already taking water from every morning and afternoon; an event that this community celebrates like a milestone…

The Community of Abo Kaso has waited for 4 years, since they made the petition to the MCSPA to get water. Many of the children in Muketuri’s malnourished children’s care programme come from this village, which until now only disposed of water from small streams and puddles, a murky, scarce water that forced women and girls to walk miles to fill their 25-litre jerrycans.

Now, they have a well with a flow of 4 litres per second, for domestic use and to plant gardens in the dry season and add vegetables to their diet.

As part of the programme, they have received training in home gardening, composting, crop rotation, nutrition and hygiene.

It was a great experience to celebrate with these men, women and children the importance of water, an event comparable to the celebrations of the mystery of life, birth, death … and now, to have water!

At the celebration, for which they put up an overhang, benches, and cooked a sheep, the speeches followed a prayer of thanks from the local elders and poems from several young people.

The MCSPA missionaries thanked God for the occasion, and proposed a prayer for the common dream of a more just world, as God wants it, and for which people leave their homes and families and share their lives with people so far away.

The applause followed the request to cooperate all from our possibilities so that the children of this community could have a dignified future.

Lourdes Larruy, MCSPA.

20 farmers from the villages of Arkiso and Gore Ketema visit the agricultural project at Jebene, Ethiopia.

On 30th May – the feast day of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth – a group of farmers from the villages of Arkiso and Jebene from the Ethiopian plateau visited Jebene, where the MCSPA is present since 2014.

With great expectations, the farmers trekked to St. Joseph’s Mother and Child Centre in Muketuri where two vehicles were waiting to ferry them to Jebene, 20 km from Muketuri on a gravel and dirt road. In Jebene, the MCSPA started in 2014 excavating hand-dug wells and organizing agricultural courses to start family vegetable gardens. This was following the request of the women and men after seeing the vegetable garden of the Mother and Child Centre at Muketuri. They demonstrated their interest by producing in the dry season. From then, 70 men and women have undertaken the course, and in 2016 a well was drilled and a drip-irrigation system was set up in a 1,000 sq. m. plot. The Emalaikat Foundation, Arcadi Motion Picutres, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Foundation Harena participated in this project.

The secret to this community’s proper functioning is due to the presence of an extraordinary man: Tibabew (a word which means “wisdom”) who is the owner of the land where the project is being carried out. Tibabew is a man recognized by all as a “good man”. In 2018, he offered more land to enable more farmers to use the drip-irrigation system to produce onions, zucchini, cabbage, spinach, carrots, beetroot etc. during the whole year. This is a big change in a society where only some cereals are produced in the rainy season. Now they have 3 harvests in a year which the families share for the own consumption and they have also started to sell vegetables in the local markets nearby.

Furthermore, in 2018 a feeding programme for children under 7 years and pregnant women was started; this was to ensure growth through an appropriate nutrition.

Tibebew was proud to explain how they shared the vegetables produced and how he goes to the vegetable garden every morning to collect vegetables for the feeding programme.

It was an encounter full of optimism and hope, but it was also a challenge for the visitors. All were happy to see the fruits of their effort and they shared their fight to improve their situation and that of their children, very much like Mary and Elizabeth in the Gospel!

The women of Jebene prepared food for all: they slaughtered a sheep and shared the bread that the visitors brought from their villages. At the coffee ceremony, the leaders form each place gave thanks for the encounter.

The met each other, they shared experiences … they visited each other.
Many expressed their wish to repeat this experience and in the future the farmers would visit the different communities.

If it has been possible at Jebene, it will also be possible in Arkiso and in Gore Ketema! And, we hope in many more villages!!

Lourdes Larruy. MCSPA

When life is so low and down, it is difficult to be thankful for anything. So it was for Mr. Alemayehu when his wife and two of his children passed away. Alamayehu was left with only one son. He himself suffered from severe elephantiasis. Alamayehu lost all hope of living and all he sought was to be in a place where he could rest in peace.

While working at his “kebele” or village, MCSPA members were informed of Alamayehu’s case. We immediately took him to Aman Hospital where he was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his left leg. The doctors advised that his leg be amputated. Alamayehu did not hesitate: he chose amputation because he wanted the pain to be taken away and to smile again.
 
After the surgery, we visited him at the hospital everyday. The smile on his face revealed the deep joy in his heart. Alamayehu’s gratitude only proved that it is not how much one gives, rather how much love is put into that giving that matters.

Alamayehu has since returned to his “kebele” in Bench Maji Zone. He is very grateful for being able to return home free of physical pain. He is conscious of the many graces that God has given him, the most important of which is that he is able to be with his only surviving son.

We thank all those who supported Mr. Alamayehu, for a helping hand is a great gift that brings a smile and joy to others.

Esther Kerubo MCSPA

In recent years, we have been able to set up 15 vegetable gardens in the area of Kokuselei, each one of them resulting from numerous efforts due to the difficulties of introducing agriculture in a place where the population had not seen it before. Each of the orchards is an important innovation in this mountainous, rocky and desertic area where grazing has always been the only way to survive.

We had the first meeting of farmers in the area of ​​Kokuselei to share the achievements and problems of this road through which they have decided to journey, and that involves numerous changes in their families and communities. Everyone is happy to have the possibility of producing food and not just depending on the herding of their flocks: unstable and weakened by the constant droughts.

It has been a meeting of pioneers, concrete people who produce their own food for their families, who boost the local economy and who incorporate nutrients and new vitamins into the diet of the Turkanas, who now have previously unknown vegetables and fruits.

The team of missionaries of the MCSPA in Kokuselei gives thanks to all the benefactors who have made possible the water infrastructures and everything necessary to start up these gardens, to the team of the Furrows in the Desert program of the MCSPA in Lobur for journeying with us in this way, and to each of the farmers of Kokuselei  who work for a Turkana without hunger.

Diana Trompetero, MCSPA

The Ethiopian high plateau, 2,700 metres above sea level, is the highest plain on the continent. It used to be called the “roof of Africa”.

It belongs to the Oromo region and makes up the North Shoa area which has several demarcations called “Woreda”. Only in the Wuchale Woreda where the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle (MCSPA) has been present since 2007, live 130,000 people. The capital of Woreda is Muketuri, a village of 17,000 inhabitants, the centre of activities of the MCSPA.

Climate in this region is extreme: 3 months of stormy and abundant rains and 9 months of drought. Temperatures range from 27 degrees during the day to 4 degrees at night. The percentage of humidity in the rainy season is 70%.

The harshness of the climate is undoubtedly part of the character of the population, strong, coarse, survivors; but also kind when they know you and you stay. Incredulous with those who come and go and grateful with those who accompany them in the long term.

The MCSPA began helping in villages with hand-dug wells in 2011 when a group of peasants approached the San Jose Maternal and Child Center that the MCSPA launched in 2008, showing interest in vegetable gardens.

The surprise of seeing how in the dry season plants grow that can be eaten. The secret is only water.

All the water that falls in summer drains through the cliffs, causing great erosion, but it leaves water in the superficial water tables. With a simple system of excavating with pick and shovel one finds water between 8 and 18 meters. Enough so that by installing cement cylinders and a rope pump 5 families can have water for daily consumption and plant a small vegetable garden.

A big change is made in the families that have a garden: the girls no longer have to fetch cloudy, dark-coloured water from streams and they can go to school. The diet includes beets, courgettes, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, chard, onions… Some even start selling in local markets.

In the last 7 years 104 wells have been dug. Five wells have also been drilled in places where a community garden with drip irrigation has been installed.

But many villages remain without water. Many malnourished children continue to come to the Centre, because the food is reduced to the cereal produced during the rainy season, which is insufficient in quantity and quality. Growth retardation is permanent and transmitted from generation to generation.

Access to water breaks the cycle, and opens the possibility of a better diet, which, together with the exposure of the population to new possibilities, education, health ultimately offers a hopeful vision for the future.

The MCSPA has launched a program of dinning rooms in 4 villages with the aim of being able to extend it to more villages, so that together with water, food and agricultural production the population can have access to a more dignified present and future.

But we must continue to look for water. Walk under the sun finding faces toasted by the sun, which smile when they recognize the white and pale complexions of the missionaries who come from Muketuri. The women hurry to prepare coffee, always accompanied by something to eat.

The last place we visited, a village located in a valley behind the cliffs, called Nono, a landscape precious and imponent.

Together, we’re still looking for water

Lourdes Larruy

MCSPA

Today’s feast – the Conversion of St. Paul – is an important day for the MISSIONARY COMMUNITY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE. It was also an outstanding day for our founder, Fr. Francisco Andreo, as it was on this day that he started his journey to the priesthood. May St. Paul the Apostle, our patron saint, inspire us in our journey to conversion and fill us with his missionary zeal.

On 24th of April 2018, the members of the Missionary Community of St. Paul the Apostle working in Paraíso, Xochimilco in Mexico City, were given 50 free entrance tickets for the cinema through ‘Tiempo para Mejorar’ Civil Association . We accompanied 36 children with 10 parents to the Cinépolis of Cuemanco. This was our second time to take them to the cinema… the most satisfying and impressive thing was seeing the lovely and smiling faces of each one of them especially the children.

Since one year ago every Saturday we have continued teaching them English and Spanish, human values through storytelling and crafts. They also take breakfast together and share little they have among themselves. Together with the children, we have created environment where they feel at home and they have managed to stay together and share everything without prejudices.

We pray and hope that what we have learned and lived together and what we will keep living, will grow and will give fruits in due time… I see these little ones like tiny seeds that have just started to grow!

We would like to thank all those people that have come to help us in Paraíso; the youths and people from different parishes, universities, people of goodwill and friends; and in a very special way the parents of the children in Paraíso for entrusting us their children.

Lots of thanks…

Lydia Imbala

MCSPA

On 22nd and 23rd of February, twenty six teachers of our St. Joseph, Mother and Child Care & Education Program gathered in Nariokotome Catholic Mission to learn about the new curriculum that the Kenyan goverment has started implementing this year 2018.

The MCSPA wants to thank the facilitators from the Turkana County Government and all the teachers who are working in the Mother and Child Centres in Turkana North.

The new curriculum approach is a very positive improvement for the education of our children. And we believe that the commitment of our teachers plus the new guidelines will continue dignifying the life of all the turkana families covered by our four missions.

Diana Trompetero