HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-05-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 1988. PAGE 5.
Canadian grain
helps feed 7 mil
lion Ethiopians in
a desperate land,
while spiritual
aid helps them to
help themselves.
Belgrave woman sees new hope for a ravaged land
BY TOBY RAINEY
After taking part in a two-week fact-find
ing mission to Ethiopia last March, Muriel
Couites is convinced that the system of
providing outside aid to parts of that ravaged
nation is working.
But more important, the Belgrave-area
woman says, the system is beginning to work
from inside the country, the land’s only hope
for long-term rehabilitation.
Sponsored by the London Conference of
theUnitedChurchof Canada, and led by
Kerwood-area farmer Don Langford, vice-
chairman of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank,
the mission was intended togain a better
understanding of the work of the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church in dealing with its
country’s crises; and to see if the grain being
sent by Canadians is getting through to those
who need it.
The mission was satisfied on both counts.
“We really feel that the Church is helping
the people to get back on their feet, and that
our grain is getting through to the hungry, ’ ’
Mrs. Couites said. “Wherever the Church is
working, people aren’t too badly off.”
An active worker in the United Church, the
outreach convener of the Belgrave U.C.W.,
and second vice-president of the London
Conference of United Church Women, Mrs.
Couites was invited last January to take part
in her church’s mission to Ethiopia, a
mission which included two ministers
among its seven other United Church
members, plus two representatives of the
Ontario Federation of Agriculture and two
journalists.
Having been invited to join the group,
Mrs. Couites says there was no way anybody
could have kept her at home, and she is very
glad she had the chance to be part of the
history-making tour, despite 18-hour days,
the 45-degree heat, the tortuous, dusty
roads, the almost constant danger in the
war-torn northern provinces, and a personal
bout with a bleeding ulcer in Addis Ababa,
the capital of Ethiopia.
With a lifelong interest in missionary
work, Mrs. Couites was also a member of a
two-week UCW observation mission to
Mexico in 1985, and says she’d go again
anywhere in the world, given the chance.
However, it wasn’t until the Ethiopian
delegation’s first stop at Geneva, Switzer
land, headquarters of the World Council of
Churches, that Mrs. Couites actually
realized the importance of the tour, which
Visiting Canada’s Ambassador David MacDonald and his wife, Sandra, at their home in
Addis Ababa, Mrs. Couites, centre, was able to donate the coloring books and crayons, seen
on the table, to the orphanage where Mrs. MacDonald works. The items were purchased with
cash donations from the people of the Belgrave area.
was widely hailed as a historic “first.”
“Church-to-church” encounters had of
ten been discussed prior to this, Mrs.
Couites said, but had never actually
materialized, and the Canadians have been
highly praised for their efforts in linking the
63-year-old United Church of Canada with
the 1,600-year-old Ethiopian Orthodox
Church, which is just beginning to stir again
after centuries as the tradition-bound state
church which was felled in the 1974
revolution that toppled Emperor Haille
Selassie.
It’sanencounterthatthe World Council of
Churches is watching with keen interest,
because if all goes as planned, it will be the
first equal-fiboting relationship ever under
taken between the national churches of the
developed and developing worlds.
The tour has also been widely praised for
making no attempt to force United Church
beliefs on to those of another faith, but rather
to work just at forging bonds of understand
ing and goodwill between the peoples of two
vastly different worlds.
Reverend Curtis Marwood, a Point
Edward Minister and a member of Mrs.
Coultes’s tour, says that a healthy shift may
be u nderway as the U nited Church of Canada
re-examines its relationships with foreign
missions, replacing some of its one-dimen
Since her return from a fact-finding mission to Ethiopia for the United Church, Belgrave’s
Muriel Couites has been kept busy showing her photographs and speaking to local groups
about her experiences. There’s new hope in the country, which is learning to help itself, she
says.
sional operations in which it traditionally has
just given away money, with a more vibrant
relationship which will see a sharing of
spiritual, cultural and financial resources.
For its part, Mrs. Couites says, the
London Conference of the United Church of
Canada hopes that the visit last March will
encourage such projects as a youth exchange
between Ethiopia and Canada; visits by
officials of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to
the London area; Orthodox Church services
in the London area for Ethiopian immigrants
and refugees; and the twinning of Sunday
Schools in the two countries.
If approved by both churches, she said,
Orthodox Church services could take place
here by as early as next fall, while a youth
exchange projectcould be in place within the
next year.
For its part, the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church vividly underscored its desire for a
mutually beneficial relationship with the
United Church by arranging for its spiritual
head, Patriarch Abba Tekle Haimanot, to
break with a long-standing tradition and
meet with the members of the London
Conference tour.
It was the first time in church history that
the Patriarch has held an audience during
Lent, Mrs. Couites said.
As well as supporting the goals of the
United Church in the budding relationship,
the Orthodox Church sees an effective ally in
its dealings with world church and secular
gatherings, more help in battling Ethiopia’s
Marxist regime for the hearts and minds of
its youth, and more support for its innovative
clergy training centres, which teach farm
ing, water conservation, meteorology and
tree planting along with ecclesiastical
matters.
After the southwestern Ontario delega
tion arrived in Addis Ababa from Geneva, it
met with Archbishop Abune Gorgorios, who
cleared the way for the group to travel
throughout the country under the protection
of the Orthodox Church, and to visit several
church-sponsored projects.
One of the projects visited by Mrs.
Couites’ group was the showpiece clergy
training centre atLakeZiway, 160 km. south
of Addis Ababa and eight degrees north of
the equator. Sponsored by a progressive
wing of the church known as the Develop
ment and Inter-Church Aid Commission, or
DICAD, Ziway is one of six such facilities in
the nation.
The W orld Council of Churches helps fund
these centres where clergy-in-training learn
to nourish the bodies of their parishioners, as
well as their souls. When their studies are
completed, priests must carry the informa
tion back to their home villages, where they
will likely work for the rest of their lives,
functioning much as agriculture extension
workers do in Ontario.
Only about 3,000 priests have been
trained in these centres since they first
began in 1980, a mere drop in the bucket of
Ethiopia’s teeming population of 46 million,
half of them under the age of 15. But, says
Tour leader Don Langford, left, vice-chairman of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which
sends donated grain to the starving in Ethiopia, inspects bags of Canadian wheat with local
officials at the Swedish Philadelphia Mission Centre at Lake Zlway. The grain is awaiting
distribution.
Hard hit by years of drought and civil war,
Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations on
earth.
knowledge to villages across the nation,
become leaders in their communities, and
are in a position to exert a spreading sphere
of influence far into the future.
One of the project as Ziway that most
impressed Mrs. Couites was the nursery,
where hundreds of thousands of eucalyptus
tree seedlings are being carefully tended
under thick grass mats woven to protect
them from the sun.
Twenty years ago much of the region was
covered in dense forest, but drought,
desperate need and war has stripped so
much of it away that now less than four per
cent of the steep terrain is protected by trees.
Now, priests hand out precious seedlings to
parishioners, who in turn pledge to maintain
the life of that tree. Later, the trees will be
transplanted to the hillsides to provide
protection from erosion, supply future
firewood and building materials, and
provide leaves for livestock fodder.
AtZiway the Canadian group split up,
with Mrs. Couites and several others,
including Don Langford, flying to the small
inland city of Asmara, capital of Eritrea
province, where they rested overnight
beforegettingupat5:30a.m. totravelby bus
to the Red Sea port of Massawa, where
Canadian Foodgrains Banks and other grain
carriers dock to unload.
The only way to Massawa is a narrow,
broken, heavily-guarded track rising steeply
from the sandy plain in a series of
heart-stopping switchbacks through
Eritrea’s desolate mountains, and down
again to the port, and Mrs. Couites said her
heart was in her mouth for much of the trip.
Theearlystartwastoensuretheymetno
truck convoys on the impassable road.
Bad as it is, the single track is the lifeline
for close to 1.7 million Eritreans and another
1.5 million residents of Tigray, the two
provinces hit hardest by the drought which
began in 1984 and is now worse than ever,
and by the bitter civil war which has raged on
for nearly 20 years between Ethiopia’s
Marxist government and the northern
provinces’ rebel guerrillas, which control
the road alternately by day and by night. It is
the only way food supplies can be brought
into the country, and each side must
constantly check the road for ambushes and
land mines set by the other. Armed guards
man checkpoints every 25 km., and all
travellers have a powerful incentive to have
their documents in order.
At Massawa, the Canadians saw a Greek
freighter unloading, and were treated to an
unexpected tour of the port by an official who
took them even into areas marked ‘ ‘ Restrict
ed,’’because,ashesaid.theCanadia ns
need to know their gifts are appreciated and