CAN ANYTHING SAVE ETHIOPIA'S CHILDREN?

Coming in the opposite direction, filling the dust track and spilling on to the dry verge, is an unruly caravan of mules, horses and donkeys weighed down with sacks of grain. At first sight it looks like the exodus from market day but people here have nothing to sell and precious little money to buy with.

It is food distribution day in Dajole. Hundreds of people have come from neighbouring settlements, high in the northern Ethiopian mountains, to pick up a food ration that will ensure their survival for another month. The scene is repeated week on week in many parts of the country where three years of drought and crop failures have left the population with nothing to grow, nothing to sell and nothing to eat.

Since April, when the aid agencies warned the world that Ethiopia was on the verge of a famine on the scale of the 1984 disaster, much has been done to stabilise the situation. Millions of tonnes of food have poured into the country, batallions of nutritionists have been recruited and local field workers employed to turn a potential disaster into a food crisis. But famine is not solved once the cameras move on to the next global disaster. It has taken months of work by aid agencies to effect a safety net that will minimise the number of deaths from the effects of starvation this winter.

And although this is not a commercial exchange the food distribution is not charity. Every grain has to be worked for in "employment generating schemes" that reward voluntary road-building and tree planting projects with food for another month. Communities decide what work projects have to be done and whom among them is impoverished enough to qualify.

By the time we make our way through the mule train - each beast burdened with two or more sacks of Western branded grain - to the distribution point, the rationing has moved on. Now it is the turn of the mothers and children who qualify for a supplementary feeding ration. The emergency food supplement is handed out free to mothers of infants that are malnourished, which is defined as being below 80% of the average weight for height ratio of a healthy American child their age. To put it more simply, if these children do not get this food they will die.

On a dusty slope aid workers supervise the distribution of this month's ration among hundreds of women and children. Each 50kg bag of the fine, custard coloured powder, is opened and shared by seven women. It is an unappetising recipe but one that ensures survival. Take five cups of water (remember to purify it by boiling first) to two cups of famix flour. Boil in the pan for 10 minutes and eat as a porridge or soup. You can't make a Christmas cake out this stuff but you can keep a three-year-old alive on it.

Concern Worldwide, the international charity which has been helping "the poorest of the poor" for more than 30 years, expanded their operations to this area when it became obvious that nobody else was going to help. Field workers for Concern dispense 300 portions per day of famix, on a rotating system, to the 6250 children on the scheme. Some mothers walk more than three hours to collect their entitlement.

Ration card No 16, for six-year- old Zenebaye Seid, is tucked into her mother's waistband, her infant sister is strapped to her mother's back. The recordings on the blue card show that her weight, which has been increasing over the past six weeks, has dropped back into the critical zone this time.

"She is sick now," her mother explains. She has six children, aged from one year to 11 years old, but only two qualify for supplementary food. The family receives 40kg of grain a month through the employment generating schemes. She says it is not enough to feed the family but they are the lucky ones. Other mothers complain that they do not qualify for help.

"My husband is strong and well but we can't produce food from our landholding. We are both strong enough to work but we have to go begging from house to house and village to village," says Merem Ali, a mother of three children. Her complaints are ones we hear repeated through the day - poor food production, diseased crops, and lack of fertility in the soil. "All the people in their village are in the same situation," says Mesfin Kiflu, Concern's nutrition supervisor for the area. "They live at the same altitude, the same topography and the same lack of rainfall."

The Western image of Ethiopia is an arid, desert landscape out of which people eke a living. Much of it is in fact fertile land and in rural areas 96% of the population depend on it for their livelihood. But up here, 3000 metres above sea level, (look up at Glencoe ridges and then multiply by three) agriculture and subsistence is marginal in every way. The mountain ridges appear to roll endlessly northwards towards Tigre and the Eritrean border. Until Land Rover and Toyota came along, the villages in these mountain ranges were impenetrable to anything but mules and camels.

Despite the inhospitable terrain the area is densely populated and there is enormous pressure on the land. People are ploughing the slopes with oxen in preparation for the Belg rains which may, or may not, arrive in January. The wooden plough unearths boulders of rock and a dry, dusty subsoil. The seedlings that are not destroyed by pests in the heat of the day are susceptible to hard frost in the freezing nights. The average land holding is barely half a hectare, which in these conditions is not enough on which to grow food for a year. The only harvest plant that can survive is barley.

Hawa Yimer, a widow and mother of seven, explains how little the land has to offer her. "We have no livestock at home. Three of the children are in school but we have a problem buying them books and clothes so one of them will have to stop going," she says. "It is difficult to plough the land and I have no older children and no uncle to help me."

Chemical fertilisers are out of the question, they are impossibly expensive, and there are not enough cows left to produce manure for even the smallest plots. Concern nutritionists estimate that 50% of the livestock in the area, the primary source of income to purchase food in the event of crop failure, have died or been sold.

"If there is rain in January it is our planting time. I don't have any seed but I expect it from God," says Yiman Mohamed submitting to the fatalism that overcomes people who do not see a future. Along with Mesfin he explains the inputs and outputs of mountain agriculture. From the average half hectare it is possible to produce about 800kg of barley in a good year. But feeding 10 people will require about 100kg a month. Take away the fact that half the produce has to be sold to cover clothes, food, health care and land tax and living here doesn't add up.

At a field weighing station, surrounded by what have become the cliches of famine - the worminfested bellies of infants, the weeping, infected eyes - Mesfin Kiflu, who has years of development work experience in his own country, expounds on why he thinks the only solution is emigration to more fertile land. More than 50% of children in the surrounding villages are malnourished, he says. Concern believes the severe malnutrition rate is running at 2.1% of the population. In sub-Saharan Africa, where one in 10 children are malnourished anyway, this score is considered acceptable. If the children around us were in the West they would be in intensive care on a drip.

In the neighbouring woreda (district) of Kalu sustained development schemes led by Concern are making a difference. "It has saved many lives here and prevented people moving away," says Ayalew Yemar, a village elder, through a translator. Food in the area is still limited but the village, which was at the epicentre of the infamous 1984 famine, is alive.

Outside the huts weavers work on primitive cotton looms set in small pits in the ground. There is a commercial mill to grind crops, tools have been distributed, local women have been trained to give health and hygiene classes to their peers. Simple measures which have saved a village from becoming a cemetery. "I remember there were no farmers left here," says Yemar. "Everyone moved to the main road and to resettlement areas. There were 80 or 90 people dying every day." Back then the food for work schemes employed people as undertakers. The survivors worked as gravediggers for the dead now neighbours are threshing corn and beans with each other.

There have been more rapid successes too. In Damot Weyede, 400km to the south west of Addis Ababa, intervention by Concern, has turned the situation around. When we reported from the area in March, the villages were on the slide. We left feeling that the next visitor was sure to be death.

A swift response by Concern saw nearly 1000 infants nourished at therapeutic feeding centres where they stayed for a matter of weeks with their mothers. Another 6000 children received the supplementary feeding ration (the "famix" recipe) and more than 57,000 people received a general food ration. Now 55,000 have been given seeds and tools to plant for next year's harvest. The recovery programme, some $1.2 million worth of effort (just slightly more than the Ethiopian government spent each day on its war against Eritrea), is regarded as a model of how to respond to an emergency food shortage "We tried to cover every angle by responding at different levels - emergency feeding for infants in clear danger, general rations and a recovery programme," explains Paul Sherlock, Concern's country director in Ethiopia. "The lesson is that if you can get to the areas in time and you have the backing then you can achieve results."

Like large parts of the country the future of food security is not assured. Nearly 7% of the population is still malnourished, mainly because of underlying health problems, but Concern is ready for the next hunger gap in March if the January rains fail.

Sherlock says: "More than 90% of the economy relies on good rains, these people are victims of climate change as well as every other challenge in their lives. The challenge for us is to help them become less reliant on the produce of the land, to assist them diversify. That takes money but you've seen the places, nobody has any money."

Last week the Sunday Herald launched its Christmas Appeal to raise cash for three charities. Concern Worldwide works to alleviate poverty in west Africa with aid and long-term development projects. Other organisations benefiting are The Big Issue Foundation and The Aberlour Child Care Trust. If you would like to contribute, please send a cheque made payable to the Sunday Herald Christmas Appeal to The Sunday Herald, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow, G2 3PR, or directly to Concern at the address on the coupon opposite.Thank you.

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