Milk is a luxury in Ethiopia. The great majority of children, not to mention adults, drink
tea instead of milk. The reason is
purely economic; it has nothing to do with any type of intolerance to
milk. In our school Abugida (215
children including 73 babies on double rations), in Fitawrari school (310
children) and in Biru Tesfa (190 children), these last two where Mediterranea
provide school feeding programmes, everyone drinks milk.
This represents 40 litres for the babies of Abugida and 40
litres for the rest, 70 litres for Fita and 50 in Biru, totalling 200 litres a
day and 4000 litres per month.
This is a great business for the milkmen of the area. Milkmen who have been increasing their
prices at their convenience, because in Ethiopia they increase the price for
buying a lot. Price ceilings do
not exist in Ethiopia. To them it
is natural to increase the price because you are a good business and of course
they have to milk the cow well, which in this case is us…
The milkman who was supplying us invented a ‘mugging’ and
disappeared with two weeks of milk money.
Since then we have been looking for a new milkman. No one wants to supply us. One came up with crazy excuses like he
supplies the prison Monday to Sunday and with us it is only Mon to Friday. What, the prisoners of Akaki drink
milk? Who in their right mind
would believe this? What he wanted
was to charge us for milk on Saturdays and Sundays although the schools are
closed. The fact that the milk is
for the poorest children in the area doesn’t bother them in the slightest.
The fact is that in one of the poorest countries on the
planet, where milk is a luxury, they don’t want to sell it to us. Can anyone understand this? We can’t.
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