"Sometimes I pray to God to take this away from me"

Reverend Dereje manages the relief and development programmes of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY), in North Wollo.

The people of North Wollo are mainly subsistence farmers, who for the past three years have had little or no rain and no harvests. When the rains have come they have been so heavy, accompanied by huge hailstones, that crops have been destroyed. All their mechanisms for surviving in times of drought have been stretched to breaking point after 3 years of bad rains. EECMY are distributing grain, oil and supplementary food to those who literally have nothing to eat.

Wodset Tegab is 57 and has come to the EECMY centre in Robbit, North Wollo. She has had to walk four hours from her village to get to the distribution centre and will have to walk four hours back home carrying as much of her family’s ration of 100 kg of wheat that she can. Return trips will have to be made to carry the rest, unless she can borrow a donkey. This is not the life Wodset had planned for her and her family.

After the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 she thought that she could pick up farming again and protect herself and her family for the future. But years of insufficient rains and deteriorating farm land has meant that today the family is more vulnerable than ever. The land in her village of Kalim, is hard work to farm at the best of times. Fields are covered in rocks that have to be cleared by hand, then ploughed and planted – back breaking work. But recent years have made this task even harder - a lack of rain, years of soil erosion and over farming means the land and Wodset’s hard work, yields very little.

A neighbour, Tamere Ayele, sums it up; "my land used to yield 12 quintals a hectare, now even during a good harvest, it is a miracle if we get 3-4 quintals of grain."

Reverend Dereje, "It is an atrocity people losing everything they have, their cattle, everything, suffering and dying. I met a family who had absolutely nothing to feed themselves. They told me they were just waiting to die."

"It is not God’s will, to my understanding, that people are to suffer. A loving God would not be happy in the suffering of his people. But it is meaningless to only speak about his love and do nothing to show it and to help. We are trying to show people our love and concern, and through us God’s love, not just to speak but to act. But even when you try your best, you find yourself unable, our capacity is just not enough. Sometimes I pray to God to take this away from me."

"We still have so much work to do. Generally people are becoming poorer. But others prayers unite us, in that we share our problems."

For Wodset, the struggle to survive during this long harsh drought is becoming too hard to bear. The rains earlier this year, which should have given her a small harvest about now, came late and were erratic. She is losing hope, "I pray to God to make my days shorter, because I am tired of begging."

Susan Fallon is an Information Consultant with JRP in Ethiopia. ACT International and Caritas Internationalis have issued a joint appeal for US $ 32 million for Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) is a member of the Joint Relief Partnership (JRP) together with The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, The Ethiopian Catholic Church, The Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Relief Service. ACT members Norwegian Church Aid, Dutch Interchurch Aid (ACT Netherlands) and Christian Aid work in partnership with JRP in Ethiopia.