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....