The Afar of Ethiopia
Nomads navigating a troubled twenty-first century
Text and images by Michael Benanav
Volcanic cones and bony peaks sculpt the horizon. Dust devils whirl like angry genies over vast, arid plains. Water sources are few, and very far between. Temperatures surpass 120 degrees. A place of pop-geography superlatives, Ethiopia’s Danakil Desert has been called the hottest place on Earth, and the lowest, and the driest. And here, the Afar have made their homes for a thousand years, pitching their portable, dome-shaped huts on petrified flows of chunky black lava, on stony hills, on sandy flats.
Nearly everywhere they live feels like the middle of nowhere.
An Afar village, set on a lava field. Over 80% of Ethiopia’s 1.8 million Afar people still live traditionally in the desert.
One of the oldest tribes in the Horn of Africa, the key to the Afar’s survival has been their ability to move with their herds of camels, goats, cattle and sheep to wherever grass happens to be growing, across a region larger than Ireland. Their goal is neither upward-mobility nor the accumulation of material possessions, but to sustain themselves from year to year with a sense of security and well-being. Perfected over centuries, their strategies for living in an extreme environment are not anachronistic vestiges of the past; they’re as crucial today as ever, as the challenges the Afar face have intensified — and show no sign of retreat.
The Afar Region is one of Ethiopia’s nine official Region-States. Its official capital is Semera, though its traditional capital is Asaita. In addition to the 1.8 million Afar estimated to live in Ethiopia, another 300,00 live in Djibouti and 100,000 in Eritrea.
“We live by animals,” explained one elder named Kadir, who is from an area called Saha. Livestock, he said, serves as a ready and essential source of food, providing meat and, even more importantly, milk, in a region where resources are scant and crops are difficult to grow.
Kadir’s wife and grandson, Alako and Abdu, listen while he speaks inside their hut at Saha.
Their herds are also their main source of wealth, and may be sold for cash, with which they can purchase other essentials, such as coffee, sugar, and the white corn that is ground into flour. Much of Afar daily life, thus, revolves around finding fodder and water: feeding the animals so they may in turn feed the Afar. “And the camel,” Kadir declared, “is the best animal,” prized for its strength, resilience, and usefulness.
“Their milk is the best, their meat is the best. They carry everything for us, even our homes,” he said. “They can survive through droughts that would kill cows and even goats…When there is no water, we travel by night, and camels are better than any other animal at finding their way in the darkness. If there is a danger or an obstacle in our path, a camel can sense it and will stop - and will pull on their rope to stop their owner from walking into trouble.” Camels are rarely ridden, Kadir added, usually only if someone is sick or too exhausted to walk on their own.
“If you have camels, you can survive,” said an elder from Ilah Alu, named Mohammed Humad. “If you have no camels, you have nothing.” An entire genre of Afar poetry and song is devoted to extolling the virtues of this noble creature.
Milk is the foundation of the Afar diet and, while cows and goats are important sources of it, camel milk is considered to be the healthiest and heartiest of all. In fact, it is high in Vitamin C, iron, niacin, important amino acids, and proteins that can boost the immune system.
A boy carries fresh camel milk in a tightly-woven basket called an amour. The inside is smoked over a fire, creating a surface that is milk-tight.
The “parking lot” at the weekly market in Asaita, to which Afar may travel for days to buy essential household goods. Camels can return with enough supplies to last a family for a couple of months. These market runs, called arho, are typically made by men.
The esteem in which the camel is held, however, doesn’t minimize the importance of other types of livestock.
Known for their impressive horns, the indigenous Afar cattle is much-loved by the tribe, but its popularity has been declining in recent years, as a result of drought and disease.
A girl herds goats and sheep across lava fields in the Danakil Desert. Most families keep more goats than sheep, because they eat a wider variety of vegetation, hence are easier to keep alive in this harsh environment.
Putting the sheep away for the night, in Gega.
Goats play a crucial role in Afar life - as the smallest denomination of livestock, and the one that reproduces the fastest, they are eaten and sold more frequently than camels and cows. Families, as much as possible, prefer to keep their large animals alive, and might slaughter them only for a special occasion, such as a wedding. “If we kill an animal, it won’t give milk or have babies,” Muhammed Humad explained.
Many families also keep donkeys as beasts of burden. Though neither as strong nor as desert-proof as camels, they are just the right size for many jobs, and are quite hardy in their own right. They are neither eaten nor milked by the Afar.
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“Our life is through animals, so we follow the rain,” said Halimaa Ibrahim, an elderly woman from the village of Shekoyta. Where the rain falls, of course, grass grows, drawing Afar and their animals, sometimes from great distances. Generally, at least a couple of households remain at their home village with a fraction of their herds, while others take most of the livestock in search of fodder. They may be on the move for days, weeks, or months. The Afar, thus, are minimalists by necessity — their lives need to be portable.
Erecting a hut — called an “arri” — on the lava fields at Saha. Thin branches are bent and lashed together, then covered with reed mats.
Fatooma holds her daughter Aisha while roasting coffee beans inside an arri - which is at once a kitchen, bedroom, and living room - like a tiny, mobile studio apartment.
Each village is composed of several families — or one extended family — whose members all belong to the same clan (or have married into it). Individual identity is inseparable from clan affiliation, and clans are tied to one another through marriage and tradition. “We all know each other by clan,” said Mohammed Humad. “Everybody knows everybody,” even if they have never actually met. “We are all connected.”
Since the territorial boundaries of grazing areas are clan-based, inter-clan marriage has long been important for creating a network of alliances that allow for easy access to pasturelands across the Afar region. Since clan membership is patrilineal, male children are often wed to their mother’s blood relatives. The favored type of marriage is called absuma, in which a young man marries the daughter of his mother’s brother, thus keeping the bonds between clans as close as possible.
These days, there is no conflict among the clans over grazing access — families generally feel free to move into areas that belong to other clans, though leaders will sometimes collaborate on plans to avoid the overgrazing that could occur if too many people and animals all moved to the same place at once. Even if several families converge on one area, “we share it until it’s gone. There’s no fighting or tension over it,” said Mohammed Hassan of Gega.
Every clan belongs to one of two lineages - the Adohimarra (white people) and the Asahimarra (red people). Though historically the Asahimarra have been thought of as being of higher status than the Adohimarra, Afar today say that the difference is essentially meaningless, as they are all equal. Their universally recognized leader is the sultan of Asaita — currently Hanfere Alimirah, who spends most of his time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.
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“We live by daagu,” said Ibrahim Darsa of Shekoyta, referring to a traditional form of communication. Whenever Afar greet each other, he explained, they always exchange news, including where rain has fallen and grass is growing, or which agricultural fields along the Awash River have recently been harvested and are open for grazing. And they always inquire about the original source of the information, to gauge its reliability. “Of course today we can share information over our mobiles, but daagu is better, because someone can lie to you over the phone. When you speak face to face, you know if someone is telling the truth.”
While some pastoralist communities in East Africa have adopted smartphone apps to alert fellow tribespeople to locations where fodder and water can be found, the Afar lack this technology. But the old ways remain effective and are as important as ever, as the Afar Region has been hit with one disaster after another.
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“Life used to be good here. There was once so much grass, and it grew so high, that hyenas could hide in it and we couldn’t see them. There was even a big forest with trees,” remembered Doge More, an Afar in his fifties who doesn’t know his exact age. He has always lived in Teeru, which had long been known as the richest grazing land in the Danakil. But persistent drought has changed everything.
In 2015, Ethiopia suffered its worst drought in three decades and, since then, the Afar Region has been hit with one dry year after another. The spring rainy season delivers a fraction of the water that it once did, and the summer rains start later and end earlier, creating longer gaps between life-sustaining downpours. Between 1985 and 2015, 64.5% of Afar grasslands disappeared — a trend that has continued unabated.
““Now, there is no rain, so there are no grasses, and the trees are gone. We can’t keep cows anymore, and most people have very few animals at all. So what do we eat?” Doge More said. Food insecurity and severe malnutrition have become pervasive problems across the Afar Region. Child mortality from malnutrition is on the rise, as are malnutrition-related problems such as stunted physical and brain development.
The once-rich rangelands around Teeru.
While frequent migration is the primary method of adapting to drought, the Afar have long employed another strategy to overcome adversity: clan members are expected to take care of one another. If one family loses a substantial number of livestock, perhaps to disease or starvation, others in their clan are required by tradition to step in and give or loan animals until the unfortunate family has rebuilt their herd.
This ancient economic safety net, called hantilla, is highly codified, clearly spelling out the obligations of those offering help and those receiving it. The borrower, for example, must return the original animals to their owner, along with any female offspring born during the loan period — but may keep all the milk produced during that time, as well as any male offspring. If a loaned animal dies due to negligence on the part of the borrower, he is expected to compensate the owner for the loss, but if the animal dies due to circumstances beyond the borrower’s control — such as natural causes — no compensation is owed. Revealingly, the giver and the receiver are considered to be social equals; there is no shame in accepting assistance from one who has been more fortunate, as the Afar well know that one who is in a position to give help one day may require it themselves the next. These matters rest in the hands of Allah. When needed, hantilla arrangements may stretch outside the clan to include close maternal relatives.
Today, however, the hantilla system is too stressed to offer much support — since the drought has been so relentless and so widespread, everyone’s herds have shrunk. The Afar, thus, have fewer livestock that they can loan to their fellow clan members.
When goats are taken out into the desert to graze, the kids are separated and kept close to camp.
The availability of drinking water has also become critical. “It’s been almost a year since we’ve had rain,” said Habib Ibrahim of Shekoyta. “There is still a little bit of water in our collection pond, but people and animals all drink from it, so it’s filthy. We’re afraid to drink it or even cook with it, but we have to because there’s no water anywhere else around here. And people are always getting sick.” There used to be four reliable periods of seasonal rain annually, he said, but now the Afar hope for just one.
The water collection pond at Shekoyta.
A young woman from Shektigolu. When the village’s cisterns run dry - as they always do in the dry season - women leave every day at 2am to fetch water with their donkeys, not returning until 11am or noon.
In Yeadulul, school was cancelled because the teachers were all sick due to drinking the only water available to them (left).
Miamro Shefaro - a highlander assigned to teach in the Afar region - in a classroom at the Yeadulul school (right).
When water sources dry up, Afar dig pits in riverbeds until they strike some.
In early 2020, drought conditions had been severely exacerbated by an invasion of locusts that swept across the Red Sea from Yemen in the fall of 2019 — the worst such plague in 50 years. Hard times became desperate times, and people all across the Afar Region were on the move in search of water and fodder.
Ibrahim Mohammed and Mohammed Ali trekking across the desert with cattle from Gega, in search of grass. Aside from the inherent hardships of life on the move, more movement increases livestock exposure to disease, and malnutrition makes them more vulnerable to falling seriously ill.
“We’ve walked for four days with no rest. A couple of our cows collapsed along the way...The locusts have made this year especially hard,” Ibrahim said.
The drought and the locust infestation have impacted agriculture in other parts of Ethiopia, pushing the prices of food staples brought into the Afar Region to baffling highs. “Before, 100 kilos of white maize cost 3 birr ($0.89); now, 15 kilos go for 1500 birr ($44).”
Afar women grind maize to make flour…
…Then they make flat, round loaves of dough, which they bake in the ground beneath a fire.
Preparing a bread fire.
The days of Afar women are labor-intensive, from fetching wood and water, to cooking, to caring for children, and more, in an environment where little is easy.
The drought and the locust invasion are often perceived to have divine origins. But other threats to the Afar are clearly from the hands of men.
Many Afar believe that the drought and the locusts are "from Allah.” They pray for rain on occasion, “when the moon is red or black…when the moon is dead.” Here, a group of men pray at night.
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“Wherever wayani grows, it kills the other plants. If our animals eat it, they can get sick and die,” said Nora Ali, of Teeru, who wasn’t sure which was worse: the lack of rain or the insidious spread of the invasive prosopis juliflora shrub. A relative of mesquite, locals call it wayani - the nickname for the government in power when it was introduced to Ethiopia in the 1980’s. Fast-growing and drought-resistant, it was seen as a potential solution to deforestation at a time when some 70 percent of the country’s energy needs were met by fuelwood and charcoal. It would also help stabilize soil in areas facing desertification.
The sharp thorns of the wayani can seriously injure animals and people.
But the very qualities that promised miracles have turned wayani into a monster. During the past 35 years, it has taken over some 4600 square miles — nearly the size of Connecticut — in the Afar Region alone. Livestock won’t eat its leaves, and while they like the taste of its seed pods, consuming them before they are ripe or in large quantities can have fatal consequences. It’s not uncommon for animals to overdose.
Impenetrable thickets grow into living walls studded with sharp spikes. “Wayani completely covers roads, so if someone falls ill or a woman has problems giving birth, they can’t get to the hospital…sometimes villages are totally surrounded by it and everyone has to move away,”said Nora Ali. And wherever it’s cut down, it quickly sprouts anew.
Wayani growing near Teeru.
Returning to a temporary camp for the evening on a road surrounded by wayani, in an area that used to be prime pasturelands.
Prosopis juliflora is just one of the plants introduced to the Afar Region that’s created hardship for the people. Since the 1960’s, over 175,000 acres along the Awash River and its tributaries has been leased or sold by the Ethiopian government to corporations for industrial agriculture, on land that has always been of vital importance for dry-season grazing. Even more land has been submerged below the dammed reservoirs created to irrigate these commercial plantations. Initially, cotton schemes were popular, later replaced by sugar cane, such as that grown by the Tendaho Sugar Factory, near Asaita, seen here.
Shrubs and locusts are not the only invaders with which the Afar must contend.
“Armed groups attack our communities, including women and children, killing them in their homes, trying to spread terror,” said Ali Dardar, who trains Afar to defend themselves against raiders from the Issa-Somali tribe. Called the longest-running conflict in the Horn of Africa, the Afar have been fighting with the Issa on and off for centuries. What had been an ancient rivalry over grazing lands has, according to the Afar, morphed into something much more cynical.
“The Issa want to take Afar land to create a Greater Somalia,” said Dardar, echoing the conclusion of the Afar Regional Government. A Somali dream for over a hundred years, the proposed ethno-state would span Somalia, Djibouti, and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya. Promoting this vision, the Somali and Djiboutian governments back the Issa’s expansion into Afar territory by providing them with guns and money. From April 2019 to January 2020, over 46,000 Afar were displaced due to the conflict.
Additionally, controlling more land helps the Issa protect and grow their lucrative smuggling routes, which link the Red Sea coast to the Ethiopian interior.
“They bring things from televisions to food, to anything — including U.S. currency and weapons,” Dardar said, pointing out the irony that most of the guns that the Afar possess were originally brought into the country by Issa. “They sell them to a middleman, then we buy them and use them.”
Kalashnikovs are a common site in the Afar Region. Despite the Afar’s historical reputation as a fierce and war-like people, the guns are typically used only to protect herds from hyenas. Here, a young man with a machine gun - far from the front lines with the Issa - finds shade under an acacia.
Since Ethiopia’s only access to the sea is through Djibouti, and the government there is controlled by Issa, Ethiopian government doesn’t want to upset them by protecting the Afar. Thus they do little to intervene in the conflict beyond attempting to keep the peace along the highway that connects Addis Ababa with the port of Djibouti. Some Afar also allege that Ethiopian officials make hefty sums from Issa contraband and want to keep it flowing. Hence, the Afar have to defend themselves.
Nimble warriors fighting on their own terrain, small units of Afar can deliver heavy losses to much larger Issa groups. “We fight on foot, and we fight at night,” said Dardar. But, he maintains, they’d prefer not to fight at all. “If the Issa come to graze their animals in peace, it’s no problem - no Afar will touch them. But if they touch us, we will touch them back.”
The Afar have a reputation for violence and brutality, which was first popularized in the west by renowned explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger. Recounting the first major expedition that he ever undertook, Thesiger reports in his Danakil Diaries that, aside from their generally aggressive natures, Afar men earned respect by murdering members of other clans, often castrating their victims and taking their genitals as trophies. This graphic claim has been embraced as fact ever since — and the Afar know it.
Those with whom I spoke , however, unanimously scoffed at its veracity. Perhaps, some suggested, Thesiger was influenced by his translator, who belonged to a highland tribe and who may have passed on as fact the exaggerated rumors told by his people. Others were more blunt.
“This is bullshit,” declared Ahmed Shehim, an Eritrean Afar who was visiting family in Ethiopia while on break from the university he was attending in London. “I suppose these things may have been happening in ancient times,” he reflected. “But there is nothing like this in our culture now and this story has been around less than a hundred years.” If it were true, he implied, the Afar would surely be aware of these customs, adding that such a tale would quickly be debunked were it told today: “With social media, some Afar would see it and correct it.”
Regardless of whether or not Thesiger’s descriptions were once true, they certainly have no place in Afar culture today.
Stacks of stones, called waidals, mark the graves of Afar warriors who died in battle generations ago.
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“The land can’t support more animals,” so the Afar may have to move into towns in greater numbers, said Ismail Ali Gardo, an Afar who founded and directs the non-profit Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA). Engaged in supporting education, health care, food security, water resources, livelihood initiatives, women’s rights, and more, APDA’s reach deep into Afar lands exceeds even that of the Ethiopian government. From its beginnings in 1989, Ali Gardo has run APDA with his wife, Valerie Browning, a nurse from Australia who has devoted the last forty or so years of her life to the Afar.
“Right now, at least 80 percent of the Afar are nomadic,” Ali Gardo said. “If half of us lived in town and half remained on the land, there’d be much less burden for the animals. And those who come to town could help support their families in the field.” In Djibouti, he explained, where a much larger percentage of Afar have settled, people who live in town send food supplies to relatives in the desert, “but here, there aren’t enough of us in towns to help in that way.”
While such changes may prove necessary, the cost to Afar culture will be steep, said Ali Gardo, and not only because it would mean fewer in the tribe would be herding animals and living on the land. “It could break our system of traditional governance,” he said, “since our traditional laws are less applicable in town. In the field, mada’a is still working.”
For the Afar, interactions between people are held to the standard of mada’a - an unwritten system of tribal law, which is based on a shared set of values called qadda. If someone breaks the law, plaintiffs and defendants appear before a council of elders who apply a highly codified process of restitution and reconciliation, called mablo.
The elders listen to a case, considering all facets from what wrong was allegedly committed, to what kind of intention was behind the act, to how it was performed, to what harm was actually done. Legally, for example, striking someone out of anger is different - and demands a different level of restitution - than striking someone for revenge, even if the actual act is the same.
Investigations are thorough, and lying to the council is highly discouraged, both as a cultural norm and because dishonest defendants face a double punishment. It’s taken as a given that the truth will come out, in all of its nuance, before judgement is delivered. While testimony is being given, Valerie Browning has written, “An oral recorder chants the last sound of every sentence, and by that means it’s locked in his mind. At the end of the discussion, if someone wants to recall part of the evidence, the recorder will get up and repeat it perfectly” from memory.
The Afar have no jails. In part, this is because they are nomadic and incarceration would be a massive logistical hassle. But equally, the goal of mablo is to restore balance and harmony to the community, not to punish for punishment’s sake, or for whatever emotional satisfaction may come from seeing someone punished. It aims to keep people in society, rather than separate them from it.
Crimes, from insulting someone to murder, are paid for not in time, but in livestock (or today, sometimes, in the cash equivalent), which the guilty party pays the victim — or the victim’s family — according to the seriousness of the crime. Fines are not decided on a case-by-case basis, nor are they arrived at subjectively — they’re prescribed in the Afar’s unwritten law books. If an individual can’t pay the fine oneself, his or her clan is expected to cover it. A ritual is performed in which the guilty part must humiliate himself by kissing the victim on the forehead before asking for forgiveness from everyone present during the deliberations.
In a case of murder, however, the victim’s family is offered a choice: they can receive compensation from the killer or they can kill him in revenge. According to researcher Muauz Gidey Alemu, “only family lineage or clan of the slain are given the right to kill during the forgiveness begging ceremony, wherein the perpetrator is tied and stripped to lie on the ground like sheep to be slaughtered and thrown in front of [the victim’s family] to do whatever they wish; but it is only for mercy and courtesy’s sake for no one clan has resorted to avenge the dead.”
Alemu says that one reason for this is that families and clans are well aware that bloodshed that leads to more bloodshed creates a never-ending cycle of blood and — contrary to what Thesiger wrote — no one wants that. Rather, families and clans try to repair the damage done and move on to a positive relationship that is mutually beneficial for everyone. Alemu cites cases in which families of murder victims accepted only half of of the restitution to which they were entitled, and others in which the families of the killer and the deceased married into each other, “with the view to promote future relations.”
Perhaps most remarkably, once a matter is settled, grudges are dropped.
The mada’a and mablo take precedence over both government and Sharia law. Afar who get caught up in the state legal system and spend time, even years, in jail must still go through the mablo process before their case can be considered closed within the community.
Among the many cultural losses that Afar experience when they leave the bush to settle in a town, APDA’s Ali Gardo feels that the weakening of the mada’a system is a blow to the heart of Afar life. Beyond the change in Afar practices, his greatest concern seems to be the disintegration of the core values that mada’a embodies.
Putting the kids away for the day.
Some Afar are involved in the salt trade, from harvesting to transporting to selling it. While the most important source of Afar salt in Ethiopia is Lake Afdera (above) where water is pumped into evaporation pools, the Dallol salt flats are more internationally famous, thanks to the photogenic camel caravans that still operate there.
Another essential aspect of Afar life that will likely ebb if more people move to town is their interdependence on each other. “We see more selfishness — people ‘close their doors’ and refuse to support each other in some ways,” said Ali Gardo. In the desert, however, everyone relies on everyone else, which in turn has enabled the tribe to rely on itself rather than the government.
And, despite the hardships that Afar families face, from drought and locusts to wayani and war, very few of them seriously consider abandoning their traditional way of life.
“I never dream of moving to town,” said Fatima Mohammed, of Shekti Golu. “There is no life with animals there, and our life depends on animals. It’s all we know – we know nothing about town life.”
Hasina Wegris Al-Mohammed, who had just walked for 10 days across the desert with cattle and donkeys in search of pasture, scoffed at the idea of adopting a new kind of life. “Who will accept me in town?” she said. “I don’t have any place there.”
Desert-dwelling communities are clearly not preparing to pack it in. Decisions are made by elders and are implemented by the fima’a — a group of young men, sometimes consisting of all the men of a village between their teens and late thirties.
“We’re responsible for helping the community,” said Khadir Ali, the leader of the fima’a in Musle. “It’s a lot of work. When someone dies, we bury them. If a camel is lost, we find it. If someone gets sick, we bring them to the hospital, either by car or on foot. We arrange wedding celebrations and lead the festivities. We protect the herds from hyenas. And if there is no water, we find some.”
With the severity of the threats confronting the Afar today, many fima’a partner with entities that can aid them in adapting to the world as it is today, by digging wells or providing education or eradicating locusts.
A well being drilled at Gega, by the Afar Pastoralist Development Association. “Now it can take all day to bring water back to the village,” says Mohammed Hassan, APDA’s local coordinator. “If we get water here, our lives will be much easier….We might even be able to do some farming.”
A garden at Wanasa, grown with excess water produced by a well drilled by a German NGO. “At first people thought this was a joke,” said Elama Ali Ahmed, who planted it. “But I quickly convinced them it was a good idea once we started harvesting!”
Fatima Ibrahim, 23 years old, from Dubti, had pre-eclampsia when she came to the Barbara May Maternity Hospital, in Mille, which is run by Valerie Browning, in partnership with APDA. Fatima gave birth to Humid Hussein, seen here at six days old.
An email from Valerie Browning sent in July, 2020, brings the current crisis into sharp focus: “…the insidious decline of the pastoralist household from food insecurity into malnutrition has gone on unabated,” she wrote. “The backdrop has not changed: The Region awaits anxiously for the onset of the annual main rains of July to September, there are signs in the sky but not much more with searing winds almost a daily afternoon event. Desert locusts have so far resisted meaningful extermination spreading, laying eggs and ready to multiply once the rains come…there is grave fear for any grazing area that gains rejuvenated pasture as a result of rain. Animals remain weak and infested with external and internal parasites as well as harboring pasteurolosis, foot and mouth disease, BCCP (contagious capricious pneumonia of shoats and cattle).”
“Another affecting issue is COVID 19 restrictions. Transport and travel is restricted doubling trip fares, reducing market days and stopping animal marketing to Djibouti. Thus those able to market what animals they have now have less opportunity further impairing the community coping mechanism of helping each other. Market food prices continue to soar in the name of coronavirus restrictions.”
“Of the 14 maternal deaths reported to APDA from April to June, malnutrition and extreme anemia was the sole cause for 8 of these. In one sub-district of Gala’alu in southern Afar Region, 6 mothers died in a space of 2 weeks – all in different settlements of one remote sub-district but with the shared symptom of mouth and throat sores and eventually constricting chest pain. Another 23 pregnant mothers have similar symptoms and 4 mothers gave birth to stillbirths in the same area. Not able to detect any sign of infectious disease, APDA is concluding these mothers had and have scurvy as a result of vitamin C deprivation. This type of problem is widespread: APDA’s mobile health workers from the northern Eritrean border, east to the Djibouti border, through central Afar Region and as far south as Dullassa have brought in rapid nutrition assessments showing the urgent need to intervene.”
Khadir Ali, the leader of Musle’s fima’a.
And the fima’a are open to accepting help that can save their traditional ways of life, while continuing to rely primarily on their own resilience and resourcefulness. “We face many challenges, so we’re focused on figuring out how to create solutions – by ourselves, with the government, and with NGOs,” said Kadir Ali. “We want to stay here. We need our space to live. We have no interest in moving to town.”
The village of Shekti Golu.
Herding sheep at Ilah Alu.
Acknowledgements
This project would have been impossible without the help of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA), which provided introductions to Afar communities, logistical support, and a wealth of background information. Special thanks go to Valerie Browning, Ismail Ali Gardo, Hussein Idriis Yohar, Ali Yusuf, and especially Hussein Salih and Yusuf Abdu Ismael, who translated and shared much about Afar culture during the days I spent with them in the field. If you’re interested in reading about and supporting the work of APDA, please visit www.apda-ethiopia.org. And of course, many thanks go to the people of Afar, who welcomed me into their homes, spoke with me about their lives, and offered me plenty of camel milk.
Selected References
Books:
Among the Pastoral Afar in Ethiopia: Tradition, Continuity, and Socio-Economic Change, by Kassa Negussie Getachew.
The Danakil Diary: Journeys Through Abyssinia, 1930-34 by Wilfred Thesiger.
Maalika: My Life Among the Afar nomads of Africa by Valerie Browning and John Little.
Articles and Papers:
Camel production systems in Ethiopia: a review of literature with notes on MERS-CoV risk factors by Tadele Mirkena, Elias Walelign, Nega Tewolde, Getachew Gari, Getachew Abebe & Scott Newman.
Desert Locusts Drive One Million Ethiopians To Food Insecurity by Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.
Ethiopia: Access Snapshot - Afar region and Siti zone, Somali region (As of 31 January 2020) by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Federalism and ethnic conflict in Ethiopia : a comparative study of the Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz regions by Asnake Kefale Adegehe.
The Mada’a and Mablo of the Afar: Customary System Of Conflict Transformation by Muauz Gidey Alemu.
Researchers map ferocious speed and likely cause of woody weed spread across Ethiopia by the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International.
Rethinking Issa-Afar Mimetic Violence beyond Invisibility of Structural Violence and Repetition of Direct Violence by Muauz Gidey Alemu and Siphamandla Si Zondi.
Social organization and cultural institutions of the Afar of Northern Ethiopia by Kelemework Tafere Reda.
Vulnerability of Southern Afar pastoralists to climate variability and change, Ethiopia by Muluken Fenta, Andries Jordaan, and Yoseph Melka.
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Michael Benanav is a writer and photographer whose work appears in The New York Times and other publications. His most recent book is Himalaya Bound: One Family’s Quest to Save their Animals and an Ancient Way of Life. His website can be found at www.michaelbenanav.com.
