"Hello after a long hiatus" seems to be a common theme of this blog, no? When I arrived in Ethiopia I found that Blogspot was blocked. The Ethiopian Government is, shall we say, quite involved in internet communications in country - so some websites are limited. However, after a month and a half, it now seems that I can access my blog - so here we go with another catch up!
I've been in country for six weeks now and it has been a great experience thus far. We spent our first week at the US Embassy learning about US Government operations here, particularly an overview of USAID but also information about the State Department and some other key agencies. I'm part of a group of 18 interns (17 still standing, with one gone home due to some combination of altitude sickness, heart problems and schistosomiasis), mostly grad students, mostly in international development programs but with other fields represented including public health, business, communications, public administration, etc. It's a great group and we're having a lot of fun.
I'm part of a team of four working on an evaluation of a USAID emergency food assistance program. Emily (masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown), Mary (masters in International Development from Johns Hopkins) and Rocco (masters in Public Administration from University of Vermont) are fantastic teammates - I'm lucky to be paired up with them and really enjoying having such a talented team.
Our first week also included development of an evaluation methodology and data collection tools (surveys, focus group discussion guides, etc.) to prep for our weeks of fieldwork. It also involved a crash course in the program we're evaluating, food aid in Ethiopia, and USAID's strategy for food assistance programming ... and meetings with five NGO partners who implement the program (CARE International, Save the Children UK, Catholic Relief Services, Food For The Hungry and the Relief Society of Tigray) to prepare for our visits to each organization's sites. Suffice it to say that we had very full brains after week one!
In late June we headed out for a month of fieldwork. We started in Ethiopia's Tigray region, in the north of the country. After a week's work around Mekele city, we headed south for a week in the town of Woldiya (a glorified truck stop) and continued on to the city of Lalibela, home of Ethiopia's famous rock-hewn churches. After an extra week in Lalibela to do some initial data management and report writing, we headed back to Addis Ababa for a week at the Embassy for briefings.
Saturday, we head off for another three weeks in the field, doing additional site visits and data collection in the Oromiya region, Dire Dawa municipality, and the Southern Nations, Nationalities & People's Region (SNNPR) in the south of the country.
It has been fantastic to travel throughout the country, meeting emergency food aid beneficiaries and learning about the way the program is helping them. Ethiopia has been well known for its food insecurity in past years, and the recurrence of bad weather and persistent spikes in global food prices continue to take their toll on poor farming communities. The food USAID is providing helps people to survive times of severe food shortage, and we are learning a great deal about how the program works and how beneficiaries are using the food they receive.
That's it as a brief overview - I'll do my best to play catch-up on the details of the past few weeks as long as I maintain blog access!
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