I haven’t written much about my research, though that is part
of the objective of keeping this blog. I arrived in Addis about 7 weeks ago and
my research objective at that time had several components:
1)
To establish connections with officials and
experts in Addis in order to collect about 25 interviews at the national level.
2)
To gain permission to enter the dam site and
conduct interviews in the region.
3)
To connect with researchers at the main
university, Addis Ababa University, in the hope of including them in my field
work or research somehow.
4)
To gain an understanding of the general issue of
the dam in Ethiopia.
5)
To figure out logistics for field work and how
to live and operate in Ethiopia.
6)
To study Amharic language.
I waited to write about the research project until I
actually had something to share. As circumstances are when you travel, things
can connect in a myriad of complicated, and surprising, but very helpful ways.
I attribute this to the Divine guiding the way as long as we are open and
flexible. I have also had to trust strangers, and though most of this time this
yields great results, it can also backfire, so I have to learn to be more
discerning in the future. In regard to my objectives…I bagged the idea of
learning such a complicated language in such a short period, and although I
have gained permission to access the dam, I am still working on gaining
permission to speak with the people who will be relocated because of the dam.
Deciding to stay with the Franciscans when I first arrived
was a very wise choice, as from there I started my Addis Ababa network. Within
about 5 weeks of arriving in Ethiopia, I collected the first half of the
interviews for my research, successfully traveled to the dam site with the
project manager, and located a translator of Gumuz language.
My design calls for about 25 interviews at the national
level (with officials) and 25 interviews at the local level (with
stakeholders). The interviews I’ve conducted thus far are of the former, and have
included employees of the Ethiopian government, UN, and other international
development agencies, professors at Addis Ababa University, and members of
NGOs, or as they are referred to in Ethiopia, civil society. I have also spoken
informally about the dam project with taxi drivers, cooks, teachers, nurses,
park guides, priests, students, and just about anyone here as it turns out this
dam may be the important project in Ethiopia. Drawings of the dam appear on
billboards around Addis. This became more prevalent after the late Prime
Minister Meles passed away, as it was largely his push that started this project.
Ethiopians are paying for the project themselves and almost
the entire working society has contributed some portion of their salary,
usually one month’s worth, to help build the dam. They are publicly pledging to
do this a second time now, after Meles’ death. What I have found so far is that
although this dam is about development, in Ethiopia and the East Africa region,
also the dam is just as importantly about national identity and an Ethiopian
renaissance.
The challenge in working on any politically charged issue,
really anything related to water, is in finding the right path to conducting
research safely and effectively. In the case of Ethiopia, there is a very
complicated system of official permissions that I am still in the process of
obtaining in order to continue my work on the local level. The region where the
dam is being constructed has about three checkpoints for access with federal
police. I cannot just move about freely and as I am a guest in this country, I
should not expect to. I am not a journalist looking for a scoop, but an
academic looking to get a thorough understanding of a phenomenon. I am very
pleased with how open and friendly the Ethiopian government has been in my
requests to have access to information surrounding this very high profile
project.
An example of how things move: I wrote about some of my Sodo
experiences in a previous post. One of the days while in Sodo, Abba (meaning
Father) Ayele and I went to an official Meles funeral. We were seated with the
authorities in a special section and I can write about what being up on stage
in front of 100,000 grieving Ethiopians is like some other time. At this event,
Abba Ayele introduced me to a manager of the construction firm, Salini. This
guy had just delivered a diplomatic speech at the event and was being ushered
to a car and back to the dam site of Gibe III (a controversial dam being
constructed in Ethiopia on the Omo River). As we were walking in this throng of
people from the stadium, he passed on the phone number of an employee of the
government run Electric Power company in Addis. When I returned to Addis, I
phoned this young man and he met me for coffee. He explained that in order to
have permission to enter the dam site, I should approach the CEO of the company
and ask, providing him with a letter of explanation from my university. That
same day I decided to do just that, as I felt in a rush to make sure I got some
data in the case that things got too chaotic politically with the death of the
leader. I went to the head offices of this power company, went up to the CEO’s
office and spoke with his secretary. I provided my letter. At first she said
she would pass it on and I was dismissed. I said I preferred to wait. We then
engaged in some small talk as she worked. Some 15 minutes passed. She then got
up to check if he was in his office. He was, and she gestured for me to enter.
For the next 45 minutes we had a very engaging conversation. He strikes me as a
brilliant man and felt inspired in his presence about the future of Ethiopian
development. I was totally floored when he not only said he would give me the
appropriate permissions, but wanted to arrange and sponsor my visit to the dam
with the project manager. A week later, I did just that.
Over the interim week I met with several other employees of
the company to learn more about the overall national energy strategy, and then
the project manager, Engineer Semegnew. He explained that he would arrange
everything and that we should travel after the Ethiopian New Year. So that is
how I found myself flying to the Assosa, the nearest town to this megaproject, then
traveling over dirt potholed roads through vast amazingly beautiful landscape
and (forged through) rivers for 3 hours, with the lead engineer and project
manager and the Ethiopian Television crew. I stayed on location for 4 days and
I saw firsthand how much work has gone into just one year’s worth of
construction. There is no question that the Ethiopian government is building
this dam. I had access, through this visit, to the remote and beautiful Blue
Nile river valley, and saw the Ethio-Sudan borderlands. I also had the
opportunity for walks in the hot humid afternoons to look at the super diverse
array of birds. But what I didn’t have was access to speak with the local
people.
Arriving in Ethiopia with a weak initial network, I have
been able to regardless move quickly to finish all of the official level
interviews I am interested in collecting to this point. I am totally appreciative that things have gone this way. The idea was to gain an
understanding, through the general trends of answers to 7 questions I developed
about the dam. The returns were, what is called, saturated, by the 11th
or so interview. I was at first disbelieving, but after confirmed and
interested to find that out of all of my interviews, not one person in Ethiopia
that I have met objects the dam. This dam appears to transcends politics, age,
whatever and reaches into the hearts of Ethiopian national identity.
Addis Ababa from the air
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