{"id":26788,"date":"2020-10-09T10:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T08:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gsitalia.org\/?p=26788"},"modified":"2020-10-13T10:47:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T08:47:18","slug":"a-cow-in-the-family-saves-lives-travel-report-in-southern-ethiopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gsitalia.org\/en\/a-cow-in-the-family-saves-lives-travel-report-in-southern-ethiopia\/","title":{"rendered":"A COW IN THE FAMILY SAVES LIVES – Travel report in southern Ethiopia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Landing in\nAddis Ababa in the early morning. The sky, which at 11,000 feet was illuminated\nby a bright sun, suddenly turns grey and rainy on the ground. It is the rainy\nseason that will run out with the passing of the weeks and will last until\nSeptember. July is the coldest month, schools close because it would be\ndifficult for many children to reach their schools, almost always on foot.\nUnlike in many other African countries, schools here are state and free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting out\nof the city proves to be a feat. To travel a few kilometers we need to\nextricate ourselves in chaotic traffic for over an hour before taking the road\nthat goes to south. Along the way there are villages, expanses of mud huts,\nroundabouts, according to the iconography of African huts, sometimes cube, both\nproduced by a frame of wooden branches and mud to close the connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roads\nwere mostly built by the Italian Salini Impregilo and in recent years by the\nChinese. Along them, everywhere, crowds of people swarming, shouting and\nmarching towards and from homes scattered in a vast and sometimes barren\nterritory, sometimes green and luxuriant with banana trees, palm trees,\nsycamores and tamarisks. It’s cold. The average height is 2,000 meters with\npeaks of 2,800 and 3,000. At these heights the banana trees become false, that\nis, fruitless and the nature, designed by the expert hands of farmers, presents\nregular and imaginative terraces, with tiny fields hoed by hand that vaguely\nrecall the oriental terraces cultivated with rice in Indochina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\nmainly women, young or advanced in years, who carry loads on curved backs,\noften with children wrapped in large scarves against their chests. Gender roles\nare clear, as in almost all of Africa, and the choice of GSI Italia, to\nprivilege help for women, finds in Ethiopia confirmation of a wise choice. The\nrain becomes pouring. The crowd continues its careless walk. The most used and\nimmediately available umbrella are banana leaves, under which even three people\nshelter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nature is\nlush and, in this season, green and colorful. The poinsettias compete in height\nwith banana trees and the acacias exhibit upturned yellow plumes at peak bloom.\nI rediscover, crossing the villages, children playing with balls of rags held\ntogether by a lace and bicycle wheels without tires virtuously guided with a\nstick by children who have never seen a PlayStation but who show a world of\nfun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nchildren are entrusted with the task of grazing the cows that the charity of\nthe Franciscan friars has made available to the poorest families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

100 dollars\nare enough to buy a cow in the country of the Horn of Africa where hunger is at\nhome and is often married to death from chronic malnutrition. A cow can\nliterally represent life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in\nthis awareness that the Franciscans of Addis Ababa asked GSI Italia to be\nhelped in the enterprise of saving 100 families by purchasing 100 cows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it is that as Christmas approaches, GSI Italia launches an invitation to buy a cow among its members, supporters and friends. Because in Ethiopia a cow can really save the life of an entire family and give meaning to a Christmas that is such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n