Developing links

Travelling out from the centre of Addis Ababa, and leaving the luxurious Hilton behind, the four jeeps make their way through throngs of ragged pedestrians, cattle with protruding ribs, scrawny goats and sheep, overloaded buses and ancient trucks, past shack after shack of galvanised metal, plastic and cardboard. Everywhere vendors ply their wares: garish plastic patio chairs, tissues, tyres, pottery, fruit, vegetables, plastic basins, python skins . . .

Packed tight with eight Irish teachers and nine students, aged 15 to 18 years, the jeeps speed along the 100km of tarmacadamed road, heading south from Addis (with its teeming population of three million), under the baking sun. Then, with a jolt, it is on to the "real roads", where craters and potholes pock occasional stretches of tarmac surface, alternating with hard-packed dirt, sometimes overlaid with volcanic rock and red ash. Stomachs lurch and churn.

Into the hotel at Ziway: time to make up the mosquito nets, spray on the insect repellent and lather on the sunscreen. We are in Ethiopia to visit the health, education, and agriculture projects, in Meki and Mareko, which have been developed under the auspices of Self Help Development International, an Irish organisation which was originally set up in 1984 to provide emergency famine relief.

It has since turned its attention to sustainable projects, devised and run by Ethiopians. There are no Irish staff based in Ethiopia. Each project is a tripartite effort involving Self Help, the government and the local community.

The rural landscape is brown and gold, covered in a thick layer of dust. The short rains have not come and the ground is parched. A layer of stubble is punctuated by low-lying thorn bushes and occasional tall worka trees. Deforestation has reduced tree coverage to 4 per cent - this and overgrazing have speeded land erosion.

In an isolated village, at Koshe junior school, the banner welcoming the Irish students straddles the gateway, while children cling to posts and fences and line the drive up the school. Singing and clapping, they beam a welcome to the Irish students and teachers. We sit in a bare classroom, with dirty yellow walls and a galvanised roof. The blackboard is flanked by a broken cork noticeboard and, desks aside, there are no other aids to education.

Kim Murphy, a student in St James's Vocational School, Athboy, Co Meath, says afterwards the welcome was "absolutely beautiful. All of the people were really friendly but I was a little scared. It's a totally different culture. I wasn't sure how to act . . . the classroom was totally different to at home. I thought at least they'd have slate boards for the kids to write on. The kids didn't even have pens. At home we have everything, including computers."

The awe wears off. The students participate in races and a football match. (The Irish were badly routed, but - shades of Orlando - the heat may have been something of a handicap.)

At Dugda Ala primary school, school administrator Solomon Tesema mentions some of the problems: the absence of library and reference books, the shortage of classrooms, the absence of a water supply in the compound, the lack of toilets, no perimeter fence . . .

Teacher Pat Knightley of St Augustine's College, Dungarvan, Co Waterford, admires the resourcefulness of Ethiopian teachers. He is particularly impressed with the timber, slate and ink "photocopier" in Koshe school. Talking about pupil-teacher ratios (we heard of ratios ranging from 70- to 120-to-one), he grins ruefully: "We don't know how good it is in Ireland. We're talking about reducing the pupil teacher ratio from 19-to-one to 18-to-one."

In Mareko, at the Women's Integrated Development Project, Misrak Admasu explains that projects include family planning and management. The average family size is 10 to 12, she says. Women are also involved in vegetable production, seed production, flour mills, poultry production and consumer shops.

Nearby, Yilma Tsige, a medical lab technician, is examining blood films under a solar-powered microscope, looking for evidence of malaria. A queue of waiting women and children stand aside to allow us to enter and one of the Irish students remarks sotte voce as to how we should hurry along - their need is greater than ours.

Indeed, all along, the nagging question as to whether we should be there, consuming much-needed resources, returns. The trip costs £1,500 per person and the money has been raised by the participating schools in a series of fundraising events. Perhaps it would have been better spent on projects, in a country where £1 will plant 10 trees and £10 will buy enough drought-resistant seed to feed two families for a year.

Another day, same sun, same jeeps. We turn off the dusty road, get stuck in a rocky gully, balance along the edge of a ledge that is falling sharply away and stop under what's known locally as a "treeman's tree".

The chairman of Abossa farm, Kabito Megerso, is waiting to welcome us to the lush enterprise - lush because of water pumped from Lake Ziway on to the fertile volcanic soil. There are 157 members of the co-operative - the size is limited by the power of the pump, which in turn is limited by the money available.

Tomoatoes, onions, chillis, maize and cabbages thrive. The land may be cropped twice or even three times a year. Megerso says increased crops mean a better diet and living conditions.

"While our neighbours' farms are waiting for rain we are producing and selling," he says. "In the beginning, we laughed when Self Help said the land could produce so much." He's still laughing.

Sitting under the mango, coffee, camelfoot, guava and lime trees in the Matthew Baka memorial hotel in Butajira town, teachers and students all remark on the difference water can make. Earlier, we had visited a borehole, thronged with women and children filling up big blue plastic containers.

A local woman had held up a jar of muddy water and explained that she used to walk some 10km to carry it home. Today, she can buy clean water cheaply from the borehole drilled with Self Help aid. (The money is used to pay a guard and for pump maintenance.) And she can water her cattle at the nearby trough. A traditional water-carrying pot was filled, the neck stuffed with straw and the Irish students invited to lift it. Weighing about three stone, it required considerable effort to heft it to waist height - one of the teachers suggested we should try carrying it for five kilomtres, but decided it was a feat beyond our means.

The strength and endurance of these Ethiopian people, in the face of odds this generation of Irish students will never have to face, is remarkable. As teacher Martin Carroll remarks, it's an experience that leaves us humbled.