Ethiopia and Somaliland

Over the past decade, many Ethiopians have been leaving their villages and small countryside towns for the nation’s growing capital, Addis Ababa. It’s become a modern-day city of wealth and prosperity in a land of otherwise persistent poverty. But for this man, the tradeoff is too great. He lives here, in the small town of Durame. It rests peacefully at the western edge of the Rift Valley where nothing much happens and the world doesn’t come to visit. There’s a small outdoor market and a single main street that heads out of town sooner than you expect. It’s the quiet life he’s grown to love and the home he’ll never let go.

This young man lives alone in Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa. He is one of millions to abandon the mounting challenges of life in the countryside, leaving his village and family home for the lure of prosperity that only the growing capital can offer. Its population has nearly doubled in this past decade alone.

He lives here on a side street in the city centre, surrounded by construction zones, in this small dwelling he has made from tin and wood. To his left, just out of view, are neatly stacked bundles of coal organized by size and weight that he will sell throughout the day at a price that can’t be beat. It’s a business he has built from the ground up and the possibilities are endless.

Throughout Ethiopia, donkeys and young men are the workhorses of the nation. They walk the streets together carrying loads of cargo piled higher and heavier than either of them could ever carry alone, delivering goods, bundles of wood and gallons of water from one home to the next. Dawn until dusk. It’s a long daily grind for a small daily pay and this young man is at the beginning of his career.

If anyone among us is better suited to balance these scales of justice, speak now.

This woman works in one of the many teff flour mills in the Soddo city market. It’s not her family’s mill but just an ordinary job she feels lucky to have. She works every day but Sunday out here on the front deck sorting the grain before it’s milled. She usually wears a long dress to protect herself from all the flour dust and always wraps her hair up in a scarf like this one.

She wasn’t quite sure about having her photo taken today, but then brushed herself off, stepped across the floor to where it was clear, and stood straight and tall for this otherwise ordinary portrait of her everyday elegance.

This husband and wife and mother-to-be live in a rural village near Mido Ado on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Harar. This is the store they run together. Beside it they are building a new home for their new family. It will be like all the other homes in the village, small and affordable and made not from stone but from wooden sticks woven together and sealed with mud and clay. There will be no running water and electricity will be unreliable, but everything else will be absolutely perfect.

It may be true that everyone in Somaliland loves the feeling of independence they’ve enjoyed for over 30 years, but it may also be true that not everyone loves their life here. Outside the bustling capital of Hargeisa there is far from enough work to go around, not for men or for women, not even here in the port city of Berbera.

Without international recognition the government of Somaliland is ineligible for international aid or loans to help build its infrastructure and economy. Trade, without diplomatic status on the global stage, is limited to local regions only, and foreign corporate investments are considered too risky.

Thirty years on everything is in place to grow and thrive, but everyone is still waiting.

Another young woman ready and waiting to inherit the world.

Goat Street is located near the outdoor market in the city of Asella. Just two blocks long, it’s affectionately called Goat Street because it’s where all the goats have settled, but many still call it Khat Street because it’s where you buy khat leaf, the legal drug of choice in Ethiopia. Bags and bundles of the leaf are sold in stalls that line the street and consumed on the spot in dark, discrete tea houses.

Khat leaf is a natural stimulant native to the Horn of Africa and is grown and harvested fresh throughout Ethiopia. Unrefined, the leaf’s active ingredient is released slowly and, when chewed throughout the day, provides a mild sense of euphoria. It’s like grazing. The street is left covered in stems and discards and has become a feeding ground for the city goats with the added bonus of keeping them chill.

This woman lives along the road that connects the city of Harar to the village of Mido Ado in eastern Ethiopia. It’s an old cobblestone road that passes through three small communities where the homes are still made from wooden sticks woven together into a lattice-like structure and covered by a mixture of mud and clay. In the Amharic language these mud houses are called “Chika Bet.” This one is hers.

Quiet streets and blue skies: a morning walk through the costal city of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden. The Horn of Africa.

Across the southern Ethiopian Highlands and beyond, the Friday market in Butajira really does go on forever.

One might think that by adhering to Sharia law in many aspects of society, men would flourish in the privilege and authority bestowed upon them. In this strict Muslim nation, unlike women, men are given the luxury of freedom and control over their own lives. But in public life, men and women are essentially segregated with virtually no socially acceptable place for them to be together to enjoy one another’s company or share perspectives and laughter. In Somaliland it may be a man’s world, but in the luxury of his daily life he is alone.

In the central market district of Soddo, a shop owner waits patiently outside his fabric store for the first Saturday morning customers to arrive.