Endless Sick Jokes of Ethiopia
By: Fekade Shewakena
I hate to check the news from and about Ethiopia solely for the purpose of avoiding heart wrenching stories which seem to be rampant these days. I hate particularly those sad stories that human beings with a head sitting on their shoulders could avoid. There were instances where I feel like exploding with anger and sadness at some of the unbelievable man made sad stories and, of course, at my own helplessness. But you know what? I can't avoid checking from time to time. Cursed be my hands that took me to the Walta website today and made me read this sick joke. One may dismiss this as unbelievable if it was not written on a government affiliated news service. It was published on Walta website which is more than an arm of the government. The story that emanated from Nekemte has it that an official of the Oromia State Rural Land Administration and Natural Resources Authority says that the forest coverage of the state dropped from 2.36 million hectares to 1.25 million hectares over the last couple of years. The official also says that 449,000 tones of soil is being washed annually as a result of this deforestation. What the people staffing the damn Authority or Administration and the national bureaucracy were doing when this happens with such a speed is a mistery and Walta didn't say anything about it. Ten years and you have lost half the forest cover of an area?? If this does not madden you then I don't know what will. If this happens in a country with responsible governance, an investigation would have been underway. But this is Ethiopia.
If you think this story is an isolated case trust me you are fooling yourselves. If you happen to stand on a hill top and look around the country you would definitely see smoke rising from everywhere like a busy industrial city. At night flickering fires dot the landscape like the stars do on the skies. This takes place virtually everyday. It is out there for everyone to see. Unlike the wild animals who survive by migrating to neighboring countries, the trees are being slaughtered without living a trace of their species.
Ethiopia is already a country with one of the fastest rates of desertification in the world. If you cannot see the magnitude think of it as a spreading wildfire. Farmlands are running and climbing uphill. Mountains are being shaven of their cover. It seems that people have reached a consensus that the only way to increase production is to cultivate more and more land rather than bother to increase the yield per unit area. Forests that have protected themselves from the Metrebia by hiding themselves at inaccessible locations are not making it anymore. Farmers hold their Metrebia on their shoulders and tie themselves to another tree hanging on a cliff to cut the one next to it. It has become an act of bravery rather than an act of shame. I was told some of the farmers gamble with their lives to cut a tree that is fighting for its survival by hanging itself on a cliff. Strangely, nobody considers these as the crime scenes that they are.
I am not saying that people stop using trees or forest products. That is not my idea of conservation. I don't believe stopping using resources is conservation. The problem is that they are being used without any attempt to replace them. There is a hell of a difference between wise use and reckless use. The maddening thing in our case is the recklessness with which we are pursuing a literally suicidal practice.
If you look at it carefully, each tree being destroyed without replacement is no less than a human being killed. If you think this is an exaggeration, then you are not doing the thinking thing. You can beat my argument only if you believe that the regular killer famine that we are wearing like a badge of honor is sent to us by god. Talk about famine destitution, misery and what have you and examine what we did to our environment. You will see a correlation.
Equate this with the effort and resource government officials spend to stop any threat to their political power. We all know what they are capable of doing. They could have disarmed every single Metrebia from the people if that was the case. This is a threat against a country and generations to come for which they seem to have shed any sense of responsibility. I am dying to know who is accountable for this crime against a country and a generation. I know I am one for sitting and watching it without doing anything. There are those who almost act like the proverbial donkey that said let no grass grow after I die? A good number of them are in government. We all should detest them. If you blame them they have their own excuses. It is a waste of time to play the blame game with them. Instead let's think what we can do as citizens of that abused but beautiful land. Is there anybody out there who wants to adopt tree planting farmers and keepers of the remaining forests so that we at least retain some tree species? Can we at least talk what we can do? Only very few people seem to be worried about this deadly exercise and I see nobody screaming with anger and a desire to do something about it. Ahhhhhhhh.
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]