DanChurchAid
Ethiopia
On the edge of abject poverty
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| Awinie is now the owner of four female goats |
Sitting in front of her wood and grass hut, on a patchy cloudy but sunny noon, surrounded by green hills and maturing maize crops, Awinie Sufie describes her situation as living on the edge of abject poverty.
Like many of the other women in the OoAa Genale village Awinie Sufie, age 40, is alone with her children. After the death of her husband, she and her three children and one adopted son, have survived through food aid and by making and selling charcoal and firewood in the nearby town Bulbula.
“I used to think about education. It is always a perpetual regret to me, that I have not been going to school,” Awinie Sufie explains. But she never got the chance herself, and her low income has never made it possible for her to send her children to school either.
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| Awinie Sufie with her adopted child |
Married at 15
Awinie Sufie has always had a tough life and being a female, her destiny was already planned at an early stage of her life.
She remembers that she was about 15, when she got married through her parent’s arrangement. Girls of that age for marriage used to be circumcised, but thanks to the efforts of development workers including the government this practice is now on the decline.
Awinie Sufie has endured, like many of the women in her village, periodic abuse by husbands. Rape and violation of women rights were rampant and accepted by the community. She indicates that things have improved but that more needs to be done.
She does all the work with the help of her young children. All the hard work of preparing charcoal, grinding cereals for food, milking goats and cattle, collecting fire wood, fetching water, and food preparation are the tasks that day-after-day are done by women like her.
Text and photo: Senait Ayalew, programme officer, and Eyasu Mekonnen, Regional Representative, DanChurchAid’s Regional Office in Ethiopia
Ethiopia
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