Getting near to The End?

Before getting to the point, just a note to say that Caroline realises that, following a particularly plaintive Facebook status update, she now owes a lot of people replies to emails. However the MoE’s internet connections disappeared a couple of days ago and she can’t get to the British Council due to the flu this weekend. So she asks for patience.

To get closer to the subject above our worries about both Eritrea and VSO’s programme here were magnified by our water tank choosing to remind us this week that it’s not bottomless after all. So we’re using the now-trickling garden tap when we can and we’re in the world of bucket flushes and solar showers (actually those are spectacularly good, bordering on the too hot if you use them immediately).

Before I say any more let’s just calm the cries of “you Asmarinos always have it so easy and now you’re complaining about lack of running water” or similar, from other Eritrea volunteers. Yes, it was just a crude device to introduce a theme - OK?

Of course it just symbolises the way we're feeling and, in fact, Eritrea battles constantly with water shortages as volunteers in remoter parts will tell you. Now the shortages have reached Asmara, in large part due to it being the time of year just before the rainy seasons have really got going.

The big news concerns the new volunteers who arrived in January and who have now been told they are not going to be given work permits. Meaning they are not going to be given residence permits, meaning they are going home. Quite apart from the impact on somebody’s life who has given up a job, maybe a home and said goodbye to friends expecting to be away for a prolonged period this must also have implications across the board for VSO here … we just don’t know exactly what yet.

Ironically, I received an email from VSO London asking if I would be prepared to be interviewed by an online IT magazine (it was sent to all current IT volunteers, I think). The resulting article would probably be along the lines of “How some IT people side-stepped the recession and saved the world at the same time while simultaneously avoiding being mired in self-pity following redundancy” (I may have over-extrapolated there). For me it wasn't like that, though. We have been saying we would "do VSO" someday for years and finally got around to initiating the process in early 2006 - quite a long time before the financial industry noticed that it had accidentally underpinned it's entire being with trillions of dollars-worth of unrecoverable debt.

So I would feel a bit of a fraud responding. Perhaps I should just reply asking for ideas on where my next volunteer / NGO IT job could be.

Interesting times, watch this space!

Climate change and East Africa
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I had intended that the above be the post but ... I had a lot of rubbish going around in my head this week – best to let it out!

Having read George Monbiot's latest post on climate change and thinking about Eritrea's constant battle with water shortages I was just wondering how raised global temperatures and accompanying shifts in climate patterns might affect this region given that it is already on the edge (in more ways than one) climatically.

I know that it's not that simple given the interwoven complexities of this planet's dynamic systems and that the region could become wetter but what if a small shift sent things the wrong way? A few years of missed rain and it's Sahara-time for at least the Eritrean lowlands.

Historically migration due to shifts in climate patterns must have been the norm and, in fact, a lot of the lowland peoples here are semi-nomadic. But there's a problem: in recent times arbitrary borders have become more important and greatly increased human populations mean much more contention for resources. So what was once a normal migration pattern now becomes a border violation and a fight with a sitting population.

Forced migration due to climate change must be coming to this region sooner or later; let's face it we need more conflict here!

On the other hand, if you take the really pessimistic view that it's already too late, that the Earth's systems are so large and have such inertia that winding them back with the quite pathetic measures that are being mooted is impossible, that the planet's human population is already way too large then maybe it will only be small, remote, groups of people who use resources efficiently who will survive the mass starvation to come and this region will have to populate the world again in a few hundred thousand millenia ... after the Earth has cooled again.

Ok, Ok I'll try and stick more to what I know next time.

P