So here is a multitude of blog posts, written over the last week, including the one below. You'll gather I was getting a little frustrated!
Chewing the Chat
So here is the long promised post about chat. Brought about by lack of internet for the last 4 days meaning that I have played as much solitaire as I can stomach and have taken to writing a store of blog posts to pass the time.
The lack of internet highlights just how dependant I am on it. It’s not that I have nothing to do but rather I am limited by the lack of internet. I can’t check or send the emails necessary to organise the next stage of the neonatal resuscitation training Susan and I are trying to arrange. I can’t skype friends and family. I can’t research the trip to Northern Ethiopia we are planning in February. And of course I can’t actually post this blog entry either. So at least by the time you read it you will know that the internet is functioning again.
It is at times like this when I wish that I was back in a country where life was easy. Where having a wash didn’t require 30 minutes spent frantically filling buckets in the one hour a day that we have running water, followed by 15 minutes boiling a brand new but never the less leaky kettle, so that the water is warm, and 5 minutes mopping the floor afterwards as there is no shower curtain and the cubicle is tiny. Where you could go into the supermarket and buy a bar of chocolate or some fish and not have it cost the earth because it’s imported. Where internet connection is fast and efficient....
Anyway this is meant to be about Chat. When I first arrived I looked up Chat on Wikipedia and I will try and tell you what I remember, as I can’t check it (no internet in case you were wondering!!). Chat is Ethiopia’s second biggest export after coffee. It is a stimulant plant native to this area of Ethiopia, with similar effects to caffeine but slightly more addictive. People here LOVE it. Almost everyone chews, although some more than others. You can tell they’re chewing by the green froth around their mouths and a slightly manic glint in their eye. In the afternoons, especially on a Friday, very little work is done as everything stops for chat.
Aweday is the town between Haramaya main campus and Harar. Pat calls it chat city, with very good reason. Apparently it is one of the richest towns in Ethiopia because it is the centre for Chat production. It’s a fascinating but slightly scary place and I have only been through on a bus. Not somewhere to go for a walk around. There are whole rows of shop fronts that seem to be given over to chat. They are mostly entirely empty except for a carpet of disused chat leaves (apparently the big ones are not tender enough to chew!) and a few chat-heads (not an official term) lying round chewing.
Chat really is a lucrative crop though, even if the money is not evident on the streets of Aweday. Most of the families we see in hospital make their money from farming, and many of them farm chat. As part of their history taking, the medical students generally ask about household income, which always seems a little inappropriate to my very British sense of privacy, even if I can see the relevance to little Ashu’s nutritional status. However it provides fascinating information for the nosey part of me. Apparently, farming cereals such as sorghum, maize and tef, gives an annual income of around 4000 Birr, or £150 for those who work in sterling. Add chat into the mix and that doubles to 8000 Birr /year. Not really surprising then that many of them farm chat. The problem with this is it’s a very thirsty plant that tends to steal water from other plants. If you look at google maps to see where Haremaya is, there is a large lake called Lake Alemaya nearby. In reality this is more of a giant puddle, no more than 6 inches deep across its entire surface area, and this is down to water being taken for chat farming. In a country with drought and famine in living memory (if not currently if you count the Somali border areas) it’s a bit of a worry to say the least.
So that is the low down on Chat, or as much as I can remember of it at least. Will I chew while I’m here, maybe, and if what they say is true that should result in several more particularly long blog posts!
No comments:
Post a Comment