Women meet in Eritrea, slipping in and out

Press, 8 December 1988, Page 13

Women meet in Eritrea, slipping in and out

Corso, the aid organisation, has found that Africa’s Eritrea — locked in an armed struggle with Ethiopia — has one of the best aid distribution systems in the world. JENNY MOISER, of Wellington, reports on a recent Women’s Congress there. She has been involved with Corso for several years and works for a development education organisation.

“Don’t get bombed by the rebels,” said my butcher over the Wiener Schnitzel.

“It’s the rebels we’re going to see,” I said. Five hundred women came to the Women’s Congress from all . over Eritrea. Eritrea’s population is half a million more than New Zealand’s, but officially it does not exist. The United Nations sees it as part of Ethiopia, so the Red Cross doesn’t help its prisoners of war. Nearly all official Government aid goes to Ethiopia, even though it is Eritrea which is most at risk from famine this year.

To the women who came to the Congress, it was worth risking death. It was a chance to talk to each other about progress they are making in their villages: health care, hygiene education, literacy. They are working out ways the Women’s Union can best help them make the transition from customs which kept them in the kitchen and forbade them even from seeing their husband’s face. They want to take an equal part with their men in village decision-making. Some had walked for up to 15 days. Some came by camel and some by donkey. Foreigners like ourselves were trucked in at night. Everything happens at night in Eritrea. Until a few years ago, the Ethiopians bombed day and night, but finally they gave up. They weren’t hitting anything.

After five o’clock, there is

freedom in the air. Boys and girls play football, factory workers begin their shifts, generators generate, food transporters hit the road; congresses are opened and go into session. It is hard enough organising a conference in New Zealand, but the logistics of getting 500 women to the same place at the same time without the Government hearing about it, or knowing where it was to be held, would tax Kiwi ingenuity to the utmost. It meant that we and the foreigners we travelled with were in a state of non-stop bewilderment. We’d arrive somewhere between midnight and 4 a.m. and grab some sleep on a sandy floor.

Next morning, we’d wonder how far we were from the Congress, and when we’d be moving off again. But if we asked, “How long will it be in the truck?” the answer was different each time, and the actual jour-

ney took twice as long anyway. We gave up asking. We would get in the truck and pull scarves over our faces like Muslims to keep out some of the swirling dust. Some of us who were scared of the mountain roads closed our eyes and thought of England. It was like being a child again, relying on someone else to make decisions for you, feed you, provide somewhere to sleep. It was not easy for us, used to independence and control over our lives, but the Eritreans mothered us devotedly.

Why did they want us at the Congress? “The best thing about the Congress is having you people with us so we know the world has not forgotten us,” said a woman farmer who had managed to escape when Ethiopian soldiers rounded up fellow villagers into a house and set it alight. But the world has forgotten them. They are not strategic. They have not managed to cause

a clash between any superpowers. Their 27-year-old war is not news. Only the famines hit the headlines. The Eritrean Relief Association spokesperson told us how the crops last year failed by 80 per cent because the rain did not come at the right time. Continuous years of drought have reduced reserve stocks of food to nil.

This year, if food aid is not given in large quantities we will see scenes of starvation similar

to those which sparked Bob Geldof to start the Band Aid waggon.

People are frightened to grow food in case their fields become targets. “The enemy kill our cattle and goats. They burn our crops and take our clothes away,” said Abrahatsion Gemai, a 48-year-old mother of four. “One day when mothers with little children were the only ones in the village, the enemy killed a mother with three children and another woman with four children. They killed the 10-year-old shepherd and took the sheep. “We are left with nothing. All the villagers will stand beside the fighters, bury the martyrs, there is no grief, we know we have to pay blood.

“A lot of relief aid comes but the enemy soldiers use it for their supplies. They come to our village and say if you want butter, sugar, oil, you have to tell us where your fighters are. The Ethopian Government has done enough harm, their soldiers come and burn women alive in their houses. Why is the world so quiet?”

It is because what the world hears is that an Ethiopian convoy has been attacked by “rebels.” The Eritrean leader, Issaias Afe-werki, told us it is impossible to know which convoys carry food and which arms: “The Dergue (Ethiopian Government) mixes them up together and paints ‘food aid’ over the military trucks.” Asked why the Eritreans do

not just agree to being part of Ethiopia he says: “We cannot trust to the Ethiopians to look after our interests. That was the situation before, when the Italian colonisers left Eritrea and the United Nations voted to federate it with Ethiopia.”

The Ethiopian language, Amharic, was imposed. Factories were dismantled and taken to the Ethiopian capital. The people protested, Ethiopia invaded and the war began. “What we are asking,” says Bereket Habte Selassie, the unofficial Eritrean representative to the United Nations, “is for recognition of the borders that were in force when the Italians left.

“That has been the basis for boundaries over the rest of Africa — the borders in force at the time of decolonisation — and we think it should be the principle here.

“We developed our own identity under the Italians, we are a

nation. We have the will and the size and the resources to survive. Our people are with us. We are sure we can do it.”

Having seen the Eritreans at work under war conditions, we can believe it. Self-reliance is almost a national obsession. Under war conditions, reliance on food aid is inevitable but they are trying to develop agriculture, run literacy classes and health clinics, teach basic hygiene, train mechanics and educate people to participate democratically in village politics and upwards. They make their own vitamin C tablets and refuse handouts from drug companies unless the drugs offered are on the Eritreans’ own list of priority needs. “Otherwise our people may become dependent on drugs which aren’t really necessary, and then we’ll be tied to them forever,” says Chu-chu, our guide. Doing all this when you are at war takes its toll. Chu-chu, when she is not taking care of us, looks strained. I express sympathy for

the women living in the refugee camp. How difficult their lives must be, endlessly putting up with so little when they were used to so much more.

“It’s difficult for all of us,” Chu-chu snaps. “We have to stop thinking what things used to be like or what they might be like. That way lies craziness.” She recently got married. Her husband is away fighting, and they do not plan children for a long time.

Until someone says, "We shall all feel so relieved when we get you people out of here,” we don’t realise what a responsibility we are. Now the Congress is over, we must be got out quickly before news reports go over the radio. “How long will it take to get to the border?” we ask, forgetting that questions like that are meaningless here. “Six nights in the truck,” says Chu-chu. Something in her certainty makes us look closely at her. On her tired face we see a grin.