After trying many times to contact Dr. Getachew to no avail
(I was using Skype, because of course my cell phone does not work here) I
decided it was time to go looking for him in person. Crazy idea given that
Addis has about 4 million people, but my friend Steve Engfer (my one person
support team in California) had given me a general idea of the part of the city
where his organic farming project was located.
But first a car. Renting a car is not at all
straightforward, because none of the big agencies have offices in Ethiopia . Using
the magic of the internet I located the ABC Rental Agency, conveniently located
a mile or so from my hotel. Yes, they had a car for rent for 12 days for a
modest 575 birr per day (about US$25). However, I needed to leave a deposit of
10,000 birr in cash, which was a lot more than the 4,000 birr I can get from
the ATM machines in a day. Rats! Then I though I could go to a bank and get a
cash advance on my credit card, but then I did a crucial mistake: The quantity
became 100,000 birr in my confused brain! Fortunately the bank came to my
partial rescue and said they couldn’t do more than 50,000 birr. “Fine”, I
thought, “better than nothing”. I only realized my mistake until the helpful
cashier placed a brick of bills in front of me! I kid you not, all 50,000 birr,
in 50 birr notes, occupied the volume of a shoe box. Ay, ay, ay. Let me see, 1
dollar is equal to 23 birr, so 50,000 birr is the equivalent to US$ 2,174. Way
too much.
So from now on I will be paying everything in cash, but I am
pretty sure I am going to end bringing a lot of birrs to Ghana . I wonder if I can convert
them there to Ghanian currency? I know what you are thinking: Why not convert
them to dollars? Well, Ethiopia
needs dollars, so they make it difficult to buy dollars. I wonder if Western Union would let me wire them to Faby? I will just
have to play it by ear.
Putting financial concerns aside, I was now confronted with
finding the so-called Bio Farm. But now I have a car, so I can get lost to my
heart’s content. Yes, I got a bit lost, but I asked here and there and finally
found the Green Valley Hotel, secured a room, and went out looking for the
French Embassy (Steve had given me two landmarks, the French Embassy and the
Yeha Science & Technology Academy). I had a vague recollection of both
places, so asking here and there I finally found both places (they are about 2
kilometers apart along a wide boulevard I didn’t remember at all), but not the
dinky cobblestone street that I remembered going to the Bio Farm 17 years ago.
I was ready to throw the towel because everyone I asked shrugged shoulders and
told me they knew nothing about a Bio Farm when suddenly a nice man in a car
overheard the question, told me to follow his car, and delivered me to a gate
right along the wide boulevard I had by then traversed several times. The
boulevard was the dinky street I remembered!
Getachew of course was not there, but the guys at the Bio
Farm called him and 10 minutes later I was able to embrace my old friend.
Dr. Getachew Tikubet is an entomologist by training, but
over the last 20 years he has fought a one man crusade to promote organic
agriculture, and the small integrated farm that can produce enough for a family
to live comfortably year round. He is against the use of chemical pesticides
and fertilizers, and favors manuring, composting, and the use of the right bugs
to achieve good agricultural production. He has now 40 Bio Farms across Ethiopia , and
is widely recognized as one of the top agronomists of the country. He has the
vision that cooperation with CSU universities could be tremendously helpful to
Africa in general, and Ethiopia
in particular, in the concatenated sectors of development of water resources,
development of alternative energy resources, and food production (i.e.,
agronomy and animal husbandry). How to bring this vision to fruition is the
challenge. “So we must meet to plan. Let’s do it on Monday. We can call US AID
and the Minister of Education. Maybe we organize a Forum.” I like Getachew very
much, and respect him for all he has accomplished in the 17 years I have known
him, but I hope we don’t spend the next 12 days planning (I fully intend to
wedge in some tourism and fun).
We finished the day going to the market place so I could buy
a simple cell phone and its SIM card. So now I have an African cell phone!
While in Ethiopia
my number will be
+1 251 98 824 3966 (the 251 is the country code for 
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