Friday 23rd October 2009

This morning was very different. Our big day was yesterday, and there are quite a few big stories around today, so we have only done the three TV lives, and we didn't actually do the last one as the kit wouldn't connect. So we now have time to relax a bit. I need to strategically pack all the gear and sort out the payment of the hotel (cash only in Africa). We have been invited to dinner tonight with ?? from the Mums for mums charity, just hope I can stay awake.

Whilst I'm here writing, a few things I've noticed on my travels not time specific.

Traffic Lights / Signs.

It wasn't until I saw a set in Mekelle that I realised I hadn't seen a traffic light all trip. Even in Addis the traffic is free to roam, cars fly around all over the place but everyone just uses common sense and it all works rather well. Although I'm informed there are quite a few bumps as the general driving style is quite free-for-all. It's also very refreshing to not see hundreds of sign posts on the streets.

Scaffolding,

The development everywhere in Ethiopia is massive in every town we went to, large or small there was a huge amount of building work and construction. The most fascinating part of this is that huge concrete buildings are being supported by wooden scaffolding.

It just doesn't look like it could support it, but as Mike pointed out to me, that's how they must have built structures like Salisbury Cathedral many years ago. I did ask Tsigue's husband about this a few nights ago, he said it is a becoming a problem as there is so much building work going on, the amount of logging being done to maintain enough scaffold poles is very high.

Thursday 22nd October 2009

This is where the blog gets dull, no travel information. We edited and sent the big breakfast piece last night, that was finished around 3am, we then edited the Today Programme package and sent that back.

These are sent using a small satellite dish called a BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) said in my best nerdy voice. It basically gives me a steady broadband internet connection, which is critical here as broadband in Ethiopia is as fast as dial-up. In true broadcasting tradition, that meant me going onto the roof of the hotel (Safely) and dropping a cable into my room.

The TV, Radio, Stills pictures and text bits all get sent back this way. And it means I can keep in touch with base through email. This is also what we use to do the TV Lives.

It takes about 40 - 60mins to send the TV packages and the Radio and pics go quite quickly. By the time everything was filed, checked and everyone was happy it was 5.15am.

BBC One Breakfast wanted us to be on live to introduce our film, so I was back up at 6.30am to set all the kit up....

This morning everybody wanted a go...but at first nothing worked. The rather heavy satellite dish (The M4) is not stable and unusable, and when I try to switch to the backup that fails as well. Luckily these were the only faults all day.

So we really have spent from 8am – 6pm doing TV lives, radio lives, and sending back internet bits literally non-stop, the list is quite impressive.

But we still have some more to produce. We have one more film to make for Breakfast television tomorrow, so another late night beckons...

We had dinner in the restaurant tonight for sanity as we had it in the room yesterday. If we'd had it in the room tonight we'd have got cabin fever.

Everything was finished at send back by 3am which gave me nice long 3 hour sleep.

Wednesday 21st October 2009

Today we had to do some interviews in the morning, but we wanted to do these as soon as possible as we knew we had a lot to get through today.

We went to an organisation called EYES (Ethiopian Youth Educational Support), where I met Birhan Woldu. She was two years old in the 1984 famine and had her life saved by an Irish aid worker who gave her an injection. She is now Director for EYES. She now has a degree in nursing and a diploma agriculture, a very inspirational person.

We interviewed her for the film and as her interview was so good we are going to make another film for the website which is just her story. After the interview I went back to her house to get some footage with her father, whilst I was there he organised us to have a traditional coffee ceremony.

I thought I had arrived in heaven, those that know me well, know my love for coffee. A coffee ceremony is basically a social gathering, I suppose it's where the traditional “Coffee Morning” comes from.

Friends and family come together, sit around a table and have a good gossip whilst drinking three rounds of coffee. That is one ceremony, you'd usually do three ceremony's in a day.

In the house on the floor is a small pot with burning charcoal, on top of this in a small fry pan the raw coffee bean is roasted at a hight heat, (I'm sounding like a cookery programme here). I realised I've never seen a raw coffee bean.

This produces quite a lot of smoke (This is all indoors) and smells beautiful. When roasted the coffee is put in a pestle and ground down with long mortar.

When that is fine, the coffee is put into a jug and is topped up with water, that is then placed on the charcoal pot to boil.

Ethiopians like their coffee, but they like it with lots of sugar. It's fair to say how much coffee would you like with your sugar sometimes. Sugar is put into the bottom of the cup and the coffee poured into the demi-tasse cups.

As part of the ceremony we also had a huge plate of popcorn. I was reluctant to leave this house. . . .

I was so interested in the ceremony that I filmed most of it as I thought it would made a nice website film.

This was the last thing that we had to film, so I knew whilst going back to the hotel that the hard work started here.... Over the next two days we need to produce...2 x TV Films, 2 x Website films, 1 x radio package and be available to do live inserts. Should be an interesting 48 hours.

Tuesday 20th Oct 2009

7am start today so we can film in Korem and get back to Mekelle to make a start on compiling everything. Last nights hotel was interesting. Although very hospitable as usual, it did somewhat resemble a prison. Rooms around the perimeter with a balcony in the middle. The slamming doors echoed with a firm clink. When I paid for the rooms, they guy proudly showed me a dollar he had. Not to be outdone by the Americans I dug out my English coins and gave him a selection, of course pointing out the Queen.

We headed straight for the fields where thousands of people flocked to in 1984.

It was quite strange to be stood in the fields where thousands had died in terrible conditions only 25 years ago. There is nothing here to mark this. Ethiopians don't hang onto death, a funeral will take place on the day of death and then they are buried with no markings.

We did some filming that will link our sequences together and headed back to Mekelle. On the way we stopped to film some farming on the mountain. The farming methods haven't changed for many years, ploughing is done by cattle.

The crops are picked by hand and placed in a circle on the ground. They then tie three cows together and walk them over the crops in a circle to break them down. It's also worth pointing out that every single inch of usable land is seeded.

Current winding back down the mountain, think of the opening sequence in “The Italian Job”.

Back at the hotel, an afternoon of admin starts, we need to interview some people tomorrow morning and find a place to do our live broadcasts from.

I opted to stay back at the hotel for a few hours, as I was well aware of the workload ahead so I wanted to get started on the website films.

I did catch up with Mike a few hours later to meet a few people. Tebereh Woldegabriel from Mums for Mums, a charity based in Mekelle. Mike then went to meet some more people in town to chat to them about our story and get their views for the website pages.

Back at the hotel, after some dinner Mike and I split. He set about writing the website pieces and scripting the TV package whilst I edited the two website films.

Monday 19th Oct 09

Last night, Tsigret and her husband Andrew (A Kenyan) took us to a very old Ethiopian restaurant. One of the most famous Ethiopian dishes is Tibs, which I've had a few times now. It's a large pancake called Injera, made from a plant called Teff. This is an indigenous plant to Ethiopia, and is not exported at all, So you can only eat this here. It has quite a sharp taste but it grows on you.

The pancake arrives on a large tray and your meat is placed on top of it. Usually you will get one to share, so a large dish will arrive with many meat, cheese and vegetable dishes are poured on top, You then tear off the Injera with your fingers and grab some meat with it. It's nicer towards the end when the meat juices get soaked up into the Injera.

To this morning...

For some strange reason, the 4am start wasn't too bad, I'm mean Bole airport isn't Heathrow, so the whole operation is small and smooth. We did charged excess baggage for all the kit, 80 Birr, that's three pounds to you sir, I intend to write a letter of complain in the morning.

We landed in Mekelle (Mekele, Makele, whatever you prefer...) an hour later to be met by Ahmed our driver for the next two days. Makelle is 619km north from Addis, so it would have taken a day and a half to drive it.

For this part of our trip we now travel south to Kobo to see how familes are getting on here and then back North to Korem to stay the night.

Mekelle is high, so to get to Kobo we drove for three hours weaving up and down the most stunning mountains. The top of the first mountain gave the most breathtaking view for miles around. Despite my best efforts, these grand views just can't be done justice with the camera.

Everything seems a little calmer and gentile in the north, the population is less dense here. It also appears the crops are better here, farmers still talk of problems, The crops look healthier than in Sodo but we were told that most farmers had 90% crop failure.

We visited “Save the Children” who have had an operation here for many years. They took us to see some families who benefit from the “Food Safety Net” designed to support people in times of need.

We did some nice interviews with a family who told us how the “Food safety Net” programme was for them. When that was done we found a livestock farmer walking past with all his cattle, donkeys and Camels. Mike had a chat with him and he said some very interesting things, so we decided to get him to tell us his story for the “On Demand” film on the BBC website.

He was fantastic, although we did have to move location a few times and work quickly as the livestock didn't seem to appreciate we needed them in the background. They were very good when I filmed them afterwards, the camel particularly making a fair amount of noise when I approached it. What do they say about working with animals....

The sun today was beating down, it was quite hard in the middle of an open field. Even with two coatings of factor 20, I still have a pink neck. Think of the kids, and the adults who spend all day in the fields.

Today was quite exhausting, we had a stale roll on the flight and that was all till 4pm. Mixed with the heat, travelling and early start it's been quite a tiring day. We headed back to Korem, about 20 minutes back north where we will stay for the night.

Korem was the place that 25 years ago Micheal Burke and Mike Wooldridge broadcast the news of a “biblical famine”.

We arrived just as the sun was going down, as thousands of school children were pouring out of the local school. They all wear a school uniform which we learnt earlier in the week are all made in Ethiopia, despite the draw of cheap Chinese textile industry.

Mike, Dawit and I went for a walk up the town to see if we could find anybody that was around 25 years ago to tell us how different it is now. We found a few and interviewed them for radio.

On the way, Mike described what he saw 25 years ago and pointed out where those places were, It's quite chilling to be in the town where so much pain and suffering happened. But seeing the thousands of Schoolchildren gives great hope for the future.

More pics on the smugmug website....

Pictures

Don't forget pics.... Only a taster of what I have...

Look at the file name (It's hidden in the info) for what and where they are...

http://katedave.smugmug.com/Ethiopia/Ethiopia/

Sunday 18th Oct 2009

Today was mainly travel back to Addis, so we set off at 7.30am. It's worth noting at this point that not only does Ethiopia have a different calendar, they have a different use of time. In the calender they have 13 months in total, 12 months of 30 days and 1 extra month of 5 days, and they are currently in 2002. New year is on September the 11th.

Time wise, the day starts at 12 (00:00), this is 6am in our day, so midday is 6am if you get my drift.

We head back to Addis Ababa using a different road which is mostly tarmac and a bit better quality than the South East road. Half way back we decide it would be good to stop and film some of the failed crops we are seeing and talk to a family. These crops were the same as the ones we had seen yesterday, Just burnt dry and useless inside.

It took us 5 hours to travel the 330km back to Addis, where we went back to our hotel. Mike to do some interviews and me in search of an internet cafe to upload some pictures. Even in this internet cafe the speed is a crawl.

Out to dinner tonight with Tsigret and her husband, but home early as tomorrow we fly to Mekelle on a 6am flight. 4am check in, Ouch.

Saturday 17th Oct 2009

Breakfast was started with the news that there was no coffee, this was a bad start to the day, but despite our protests it was not possible. Then just as we got up to leave, coffee was found. This would be a good day after all.

Today we travel for another 2 hours, the driving was much more dirt track than yesterday. In some places it is quite bad, and in others some tarmac that is clearly a few years old, but better than bouncing along on the gravel.

As we get closer to our destination, we see extensive work being done on building new roads, these are essential for transporting produce and also for the aid trucks to have a quicker travelling time.

We have travelled to the Wolayta region, and Sodo in particular, 380km south of Addis Ababa. The trip south gave us some spectacular views on the way, but soon we saw field after field of dried, burnt maize. Entire fields of burnt crops.

After passing through a few sparse towns, Sodo was a surprise. The town was heaving with people, cafés, bars, restaurants lined the streets with hundreds of people trading and transporting goods along the main strip.

We met up with a local aid programme who took us to see some families who have been recipients of Plumpynut, A peanut mixture enhanced with vitamins and minerals which is developed for feeding to malnourished children. It's better than any flour based products as these need water to digest, where as Plumpynut is a butter. This used to be imported from France, but now is made by a local producer in Addis, so this is now an Ethiopian product.

We met two families who kindly told us their stories of famine, largely based around the failure of their crops meaning they had nothing of their own to eat or sell. When you drive into a community, once a child spots you, everyone knows about you arrival pretty quickly, and soon everyone is out to see what you are here for. All of them are happy to see you and want to take part in what you are doing.

After visiting the families we went to find a farmer to speak to who would tell us about the crops and the rains. We found two who were very keen to show us their land and tell us about the season. In Ethiopia, it should rain solidly for four months, June, July, August and September. This year they barely had a month, and when it did come, it was so erratic that is damaged what was left of the crop.

On the way we passed a market so decided to stop off and see what was being sold. The market had thousands of people there, and as soon as we arrive there was much excitement.

As soon as we stepped from the car we were surrounded by hundreds of children from all directions, as we moved around the market they followed us as closely as they could all the way around. There was much pushing, shoving and running to follow us round. It was an incredible experience to go through. We managed one small lap of the market, stopping to ask a woman about the corn she was selling.

On the way back to the village we stopped of to film one final piece, the “piece to camera” where Mike shows you the damaged corn field. We found a beautiful strip of farmland which overlooked the most stunning valley. It was a most beautiful breathtaking panoramic view. We managed to film this sequence just as the sun went down.

We were meant to spend the night about two hours back to Addis Ababa, but as the sun had gone down, we decided to drive back to Sodo to stay the night there. We arrived at the hotel, and grabbed the last rooms. There were no other options, so this was a great relief.

Tomorrow, back to Addis to gather final bits before out flight north to Mekelle.

Friday 16th Oct 2009

A full nights sleep in a proper bed was just when I needed, I even woke naturally before the alarm so I feel very refreshed. We have an interview with a government spokesperson at 11am so even time for a nice relaxed breakfast.

The interview is at the Ministry for information, sounds like department from Harry Potter, which is the same place where our permit was handled, so we know this building well by now.

We then made it back to the hotel to meet a worker who wouldn't talk to us over the phone, but gave us some great details about who to see and where to go over the next few days. Then the long drive south to the Wolletta region (spell?). The spelling of place names can vary greatly. They change and develop over time.

I thought the trip was going to be dirt road, but so far it's actually mostly tarmac, but the stench of diesel is overpowering. The traffic in Addis is quite bad, the major roads congested at most times of the day. Now we are heading out this road has hundreds of haulage trucks transporting all sorts of things around the country.

Addis is high up on a mountain, so we are now heading down the valley and seeing beautiful countryside, with mountains in the distance, schoolchildren and locals walking along the side of the road with donkeys / mules carrying loads. Every now and then we pass a village of mud huts and brick buildings, with people selling food at the side of the street.

As we head further out we start to see fields of crops although they mostly look dry and burnt. Some areas look OK, on closer inspection we realise that this is due to the irrigation that has been installed in some areas to help use the rains better, this seems to be working.

A few huge greenhouses appear every couple of miles, these are for growing flowers which is big business for export here. I'm told Somerfield has a big deal with one grower here. A lot gets grown here as Ethiopian labour is cheaper than Kenya, and cheap in general. Then we see row upon row of greenhouse, it is the largest in the country and is right beside one of Ethiopia's rivers. The problem is that these greenhouses takes large amounts of water from the river. I'm also told they use pesticides that are damaging to the soil.

The driving is interesting, lots of horn tooting, but in quite a nice, “watch out I'm coming” toot, rarely in an aggressive way. You do have to watch out for animals wandering / bolting across the road, as well as people carting their goods around as cars overtake lorries. This game becomes much more interesting after dark. . . .

After 4-5 hours driving we stop for the night at a nice, and very quiet hotel.

We are travelling with Tsiget (pron. See-gay), a reporter from the BBC French Afrique service. She is Ethiopian but grew up in Bordeaux. She now lives in Ethiopia and works as a freelance journalist. It's been nice listening to her stories in the car on the drive down.

Food prices here are very good, for instance, tonight's meal for four people including 6 beers came to the grand total of £12.50. So don't worry, I'm looking after the licence fee.

Tomorrow, 6.30am breakfast and then to drive a bit further for a packed days filming.

Thursday 15th Oct 2009

We took off at 10pm, had inflight dinner at 11pm, and then after 3 hours of upright, twisted neck, cramped leg sleep, we were woken for breakfast. Before landing at 5am, so Thursday was an interesting day.

Dawit our fixer met us at the airport with all the paperwork for our equipment, which given the effort that goes to getting it all listed, it was waved though very quickly. It was very refreshing to get outside Bole airport and into the fresh air.

Nothing can be done on our trip without written stamped permission. The government are very tight on paperwork and knowing what you are doing, more importantly where. So our first stop was to pick up our filming licence, this was all ready when we went to pick it up, but Dawit noticed that one of our major locations wasn't listed, this took them about an hour to tell us to come back later in the day to see if it was OK. It took them till 6pm and a further interview for them to agree, for reasons we'll never know.

During the middle of the day we went and met some of the major charities, Oxfam, Save the Children and introduce ourselves and find out as much information as possible. A few of the charities and finding it hard working with the government as well, so face to face meetings are better for us to find out better information as if the charities cross the authorities they get banned from travelling to certain areas.

This afternoon we also managed an interview with Felix Gomez from the World Food Programme. Always nice to get your first thing on tape.

Lunch bought my first cup of Ethiopian coffee, and it was as lovely as I thought it would be. Each other one throughout the afternoon got stronger and nicer, just the pick I needed for the afternoon.

In the evening, dinner in the hotel and Mike made some more calls to set up our next few days.

I took this opportunity to check over the kit, and to my horror discovered a missing lead, something I had actually been dreading. But seeing as I have bought backup kit for most eventualities it is not essential, we do however know people flying out on Saturday to where will be be for the broadcasting, so we are attempting to get them to bring it out to us, a bonus if they can.

Preamble

When I was asked to go to Ethiopia, texted in fact, it's fair to say I ignored it. This was mainly as it fell amongst 4 other communications from work that day which I ignored with equal importance. It was the eve of my wedding after all, and it's fair to say I had other things on my mind that day.

So when I got back to work after a few days off I could start to think seriously about what I had been offered. I of course had been thinking about it over those days anyway and as soon as I scanned the word Ethiopia it jumped out at me. I was seven when the Michael Burke broke the story of famine on the BBC Six o'clock news, but I still vividly remember those reports and pictures, if not from then, from repeated viewings on countless telethons.

So that would be by initial thoughts of Ethiopia, and in the preparation of this trip I can see how wrong that is, but I have no other reference point as the tourism and beauty of Ethiopia is always overshadowed by the great famine of 84.

I was unsure if I wanted to take this job on, for no good reason other than it being way out of my comfort zone (Previous work trips this year, Washington, Copenhagen, Holland, Rome, Ireland), Africa would be vastly different, especially as I've never been before. Each person I mentioned it too without fail said I should snap up the opportunity and that if we be an amazing experience. I always knew this underneath and just needed that re-assurance.

And so I said yes, (I always remember being told not to start a sentence with “and”, but it fits, so i'm leaving it in....). The other big part of the bargain, was that I got to work with Mike Wooldridge, a very well respected BBC reporter who was in Ethiopia with Micheal Burke in 1984. Countless people told me how lovely he is to work with, and also how he works non-stop.

So a we had just about two weeks of planning, Mike fielding many calls to aid agencies, and me finding out a lot about vaccinations, the hard way. It's usually a process over month or so. I had 8 jabs in two weeks. I also had to think very carefully about kit. We have a standard kit we take out to shoot / edit and do live video, but this time I needed to have a backup for almost every piece of kit. There is a high chance of us being limited on power, so battery conservation is top of the list.

We have a fixer, Dawit, who will be with us all the time in Ethiopia, I've never worked with a fixer before, but he will be there to negotiate, translate, drive and generally smooth over any problems we may encounter. I already know he is a key part of this operation.

We are here for a few reasons. It's 25 years since the famine report from Michael Burke so we want to look at the progress in 25 years, but we also hear reports still of millions of Ethiopians close to famine still, mainly at the southern end of the country. The Government are worried that the country is only remembered for the famine, which given my earlier writing is a fair point, so don't want to flag up any current famine problems as once again all their positive news and success stories get hidden. They also argue that they want to have the opportunity to help their own people before other countries wade in with aid. We also plan to look at a project known as the “Food Safety Net”, a scheme designed to make sure that the events of 1984 could never be repeated.

So I type on board my 7 hour flight to Addis Ababa, very much excited by the adventures of the next 10 days. We have a huge amount of work to do, but it will be an amazing experience I shall never forget.