#ONEMums: Should we change our view of Ethiopia?

Michael Buerk in a BBC image from 1984 news reports

Here’s a word-association game: What do you think when you hear “Ethiopia”?

For a lot of people, Ethiopia is synonymous with “famine”, as a result of the crisis that hit the country in 1984.

From that situation grew Band Aid and, later, Make Poverty History. It prompted Billy Crystal’s famous joke in When Harry Met Sally: “I didn’t know that they had food in Ethiopia. This will be a quick meal. I’ll order two empty plates and we can leave.”

It also cemented the country in our minds as a place of children with distended bellies or skeletal frames, huge aid camps and a people unable to help themselves.

That’s one of the issues I’m most looking forward to addressing on the #ONEMums trip to Ethiopia starting next Saturday. Along with Michelle from Mummy from the Heart, a host of US parent bloggers and the campaigning organisation ONE, I’ll be meeting with farmers who have adopted smart practices, with women entrepreneurs, even with university students to hear about their outlook and opinions.

My ideas about Ethiopia were, like George Michael's Band Aid hair, stuck in the '80s

I’m going to Ethiopia as an expense-paid guest of The ONE Campaign (www.one.org). We are here to report back to you how lives have been improved or saved by British-supported programs. ONE is a non-partisan organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease by pressing political leaders to support smart programs that save lives. ONE doesn’t ask for your money, just your voice.

In reading the book by journalist Peter Gill Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid, I’ve realised how my own ideas about the country have been stuck in the ’80s, and didn’t take into account the political and social developments that have happened since. Gill describes the frustration and humiliation that Ethiopians have about this image of their country, as well as the damage those attitudes inflict:

There is…the damaging and one-dimensional image the western world has of Ethiopia and of Africa. It is an image created and sustained by the media and the aid agencies. It has not changed in a quarter of a century, and there is a real danger that we ignore the progress — and thus the potential for progress — made since the dreadful suffering of the 1984 famine when Ethiopian Marxists and Cold Warriors in the West allowed many hundreds of thousands to die of hunger.

Gill describes a country that, while still dependent on the rains, has undergone economic changes and is tackling issues itself, where foreign aid is still vital but part of an effort that comes from within and without.

On our trip Michelle and I will be highlighting the people and personal stories of modern Ethiopia. I hope this drags our understanding of the country and its poverty and hunger issues into the 21st century.

How you can get involved

Want to be a #ONEMum Community Partner and be part of the team back here in the UK? Pop your information into this form and our contact at ONE, Saira, will be in touch!

 Find out more about our #ONEMums / #ONEMoms trip:

Why you’ll find BritMums in Ethiopia this October

 Mummy from the Heart: Harder than I thought

Visit the ONE blog to learn more and read reports from all the bloggers on the trip

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

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