Case Studies

Bonga

A Day in the Life of Haile Yesho

Haile Yesho, 46, lives in Bonga state forest in Kaffa – home of wild coffee - in south-western Ethiopia. He comes from the Manja community, and here he describes how he and his village are working with the Ethiopian Government and the British charity FARM-Africa to protect and manage the forest to preserve its future. 

“I get up when I hear the cock crowing around 5.30am…my wife lights the fire inside our tukul (traditional Ethiopian house) and prepares coffee and fried maize for me and my six children. I’ll drink my coffee sitting outside and check the animals – we’ve got three cows, an ox, two sheep and 15 chickens.

It’s my job to patrol the forest to make sure people don’t cut down trees or uproot wild coffee bushes. We’ve got some very important trees here, such as Cordia Africana and Schefflera abyssinica. One of the most endangered is Aningeria adolfi-ferderechi because it’s cut down to make about half a million beehives in Kaffa alone.

In the morning, if I’m sowing seeds I’ll plough my land first - I’ve got about three hectares. I’ll use my own ox and then rent another one from the community to do the ploughing. My wife follows behind clearing away the weeds. Depending on the season, I could be harvesting maize or selling new sorts of vegetables. I’m proudest of my wild coffee bushes, grown from seed and intercropped with enset, a kind of banana plant. I was the first person to intercrop coffee like this and now everyone is copying me.

We live on the edge of the forest so it’s very quiet – there are no cars nearby and there are trees all around us. You can only get here by walking in, across two log bridges. Since we signed the forest management agreement with the Government we have the right to manage and protect forest. We also have exclusive user rights over forest products like wild coffee, cardamom, pepper, bamboo and medicinal plants. But for the edible products like cardamom - there’s a lot of competition from the baboons.

My community, the Manja, have traditionally always collected firewood, so we’ve agreed a wood quota with the villagers, which depends on their income. Someone who’s very poor can collect more firewood than someone who’s better off. That way we help to ensure the forest isn’t overused.

We sell our firewood and charcoal in the local town. It used to be the only thing we did. And people used to look down on us. They wouldn’t let us into their houses to deliver fuel and would just shout, ‘You, charcoal burner,’ rather than calling us by our names. Now we keep bees, chickens, oxen and cows and grow avocado, beetroot, cabbage, carrots and potatoes – all new crops to the area. We are treated with more respect and have started to earn an income for our community.

If I’ve spent the morning ploughing, I’ll have a bit of a rest, sitting on some banana leaves under the shade of a tree with my wife. It’s very hard work controlling two oxen. If they are inexperienced as one or two of our community animals are, then you have to guide them – sometimes they take off in all directions – and you have to bring them back on course.

At lunchtime, I usually have something to eat at home. It’s usually kocho, roasted meat and local cabbage. Kocho is our local bread, made from enset and spiced with Berberi peppers. If it’s a fasting day when we’re not eating meat, we may have chickpea stew and kocho with some of our own vegetables.

Seventeen years ago under the communist regime, we were forced off our land at gunpoint, our homes were destroyed and trees were planted where we used to live.  We were made to resettle about two hours walk away from here at Kanteri, a place with very little land. There was no room for our animals and it resulted in a lot of conflict with the other villagers.

Back in 1991 when the present government came to power, they allowed us to come home. However, there was a tree plantation where our village used to be, so we had to settle in clearings nearby. The authorities thought we were taking the land illegally and imprisoned all 66 of us for six months.

Around then, FARM-Africa, a British non-governmental organisation, arrived. At first we were very suspicious of them. I was one of a group who planned to drive them away. But they were very patient and helped us a lot. We worked together to investigate the capacity of the forest, its uses and problems and what sort of income we could get from its products. Based on that, we negotiated with all the user groups and got together to write a forest management plan.

		FARM-Africa has taken us to other villages to see how deforestation has affected them because there’s only about 60,000 hectares of natural forest left in Bonga. And we’ve had a lot of training, learning about how we can manage the forest better as well as the benefits of new crops and implements like watering cans. As a result I shifted my maize field to potato and that attracted others to follow suit – the prices are much better.   To combat the problem of destroying trees to build hives, we’ve adopted a new design, called a Kenyan Top-bar hive. We can build these using local forest bamboo, which quickly regenerates after cutting to cultivate so there’s not the same destruction. You can inspect them without harming the bees and in terms of yield it looks like they’ll be about four times better.
We still have a lot of progress to make in our village. We could really do with a flourmill – women are still grinding maize by hand and they can’t get access to the mill in the local town because there is still prejudice against us. And we also need a better water supply. We are using two springs here but people also drink from the river and lots of children get diarrhea. We plan to introduce irrigation and have a borehole in the future.

Late in the afternoon, someone may shout over from another tukul inviting us for Buno Uyote, meaning ‘come and drink coffee’. Neighbours get together to talk. Some of the discussions are about small local issues but some may be about complex regional and national matters. We sit inside the tukul and coffee is served to everyone. We all take part in the discussion.

Recently we talked about family planning and the importance of birth spacing. We had no reproductive health services here until FARM-Africa arrived.  Several women have died giving birth and many have become weak from having nine or ten children. Women are expected to sleep outside the tukul when they menstruate and are not allowed to cook food or serve. There was a very heated discussion about the custom, some people agreed with it and some people said we had to change. I think it gave people lots to think about.

Last autumn when we signed the forest management agreement with the Government, it changed our lives. As a community we are confident that we will not be moved to another place again. We want to secure the forest and to benefit from it. We want credit and advice from the government and we want to farm and change our livelihoods with improved seed varieties and new implements. We’re selling our wild organic coffee to the Kaffa Zone Coffee Cooperative Union, which is exporting it to Germany. People in the village are already starting to see the benefits.

In the evening, we’ll have a similar meal to lunchtime with all the family…it’s quite dark inside our tukul but it’s cosy. Our animals are kept inside with us because of predators…so we know they’re safe.

At around 9pm, I know it’s time for bed when I hear the sound of the Colobus monkeys. We all settle down gradually and go to sleep.”

Read about the Bonga project >>>

Other case studies from Bonga

Beehives and Abebe Tesfa >>>
Couples’ Life Undergoes Transformation >>>
Gone are the Days of Hardship >>>
Livelihood Supports >>>
Manja and the Bonga forest: A story of successful interaction >>>