Gumuz

I found a hotel near by that had internet so am having a delicious Ethiopian coffee while I respond to a few emails. I feel like I was swallowed by a whale and swimming in space. Three days now with out internet. Electricity is by generator tonight. The Gumuz trip is moving along but with out updates the amount of information is piling up. If I get the internet it is very likely that I will be unable to send you very much in the way of photographs. The change that has occurred since I was here eight years ago is phenomenal. It is like a different planet. Of course the time of year has a lot to do with it. It is the middle of the rainy season and the grass and everything is green. The rains last from June till September and although Ethiopia has

still some dry areas it is very obvious that it has been raining here. The reforestation vegetations have vastly changed due to the progress of the nursery programs started by the Devxchange programs 8 years ago.

Eight years ago there simply were very few trees. The town of Gilgel Beles had no trees eight years ago. Now along the river, creeks and valleys there are dense forests. Around 2 million trees have been planted through the Devxchange agro-forestry project. There are fruit trees and timber trees some times so dense it is impassable. The nursery project has multiplied ten fold, duplicating
so successfully that Feru the project manager was given a government award for the most successful project of its kind in the country. They have given the project many acres of land as a reward for its efforts.

The change to the Gumuz is not hard to see. The children are all

healthy and malnutrition is not visible any where. Model farms have introduced Moringa trees that provide protein to people and livestock, Coffee, Mango, Manec, Orange trees, Grapefruit Trees, Eucalyptus, Grarcilla, Bamboo, Lucinda (animal feed tree)Avocado, Papaya, Banana, Grablea, Guava, as well as corn, tea, various kinds of spices and peppers and many other plants that for which I have no name. Some varieties of bamboo grow as much as a foot in a day and grafting varieties of trees together has given unlimited varieties of plants. I will post more pictures when I can.

Today I toured for the last time one of the dozens of model farms run by the Gumuz in this part of Ethiopia. These people know the meaning of discrimination. Their skin is pitch black and their past culture is quite different from that of the Amhara. As these beautiful people tell me their stories of the way things were for them as children, the hardships and dangerous ways of life that shaped their primitive existence, and they expressed the hurt they feel directed at them because of their past, I thought the human being is an arrogant being. There is always some one who thinks they are better than the other. Every one is different in their own way but we all have the same blood and life in our veins. We all were created by the same God and source of life.

These people, the Gumuz, are going through an amazing transition. In just eight years they have been transformed from a ferocious people who killed one another constantly and any one who strayed into their territory to a hard working open minded people who are learning the meaning of Christian love. They are becoming very successful agriculturalists who’s hard work has enabled them to become successful business people able to provide for themselves and their families.

Gomtar Baredo recalled his childhood and the very difficult times, now he says he has a sense of ownership, has a future, and is putting his six children in school. He owns oxen and ploughs his own fields and plants his own sorghum and corn and sells sesame seeds for oil. His trees and bamboo can be sold for thousands of dollars and provide his own building materials to build is home. They have no

time for killing or hunting, in fact he says he doesn’t have a gun or the weapons he used to have. He respects life now and as a Christian has no wish to harm another.

Gisa is another 50 year old Gumuz who’s parents died when he was young. They tried living in Sudan for a while and then came back to the Gumuz territory. He has 15 children and three wives and in six years he has transformed his life through the Devxchange project. He has acres of forests, of mango trees and dozens of trees that can be sold for timber or firewood, banana trees, mangos, orange, grapefruit trees, peppers plants that produce year round, tea plants and thousands of seedlings that sell for a dollar each or more.

Under the shade of the mango trees he has coffee trees that have bent branches laden with coffee beans. His children all attend school and two of them have diplomas from Agriculture College. Life is good he says, he has everything he needs and more.

Devxchange International began this program eight years ago and now has moved the start up program to other areas because the program has become a success. These model farmers have learned

the business and started their own seed beds and like a new birth have multiplied the program like it was designed to do to give them the benefit and become self sufficient. They will still be visited by Devxchange and the churches will still be shepherded as they continue to grow but they now can stand on their own.

Follow me into North Shoa where the project is being launched in the middle of four tribes that are in need of the assistance but who have been at odds with each other for hundreds of years. Feru the project manager is an exceptional man and I'll be writing about how God is using this non political man in this dangerous part of the world.

For more information or to help the new project in a new area please visit https://devxchange.org/forestry