Going back to school

As kids break up for the Christmas holidays in the UK this week, 20-year-old Teshome in Ethiopia is still hoping he will one day go back to school.

It is several hours’ journey from Teshome’s home in Kotoba, central Ethiopia, to the nearest secondary school, so children live in a rented house near the school during term time. However, Teshome’s parents could not afford to pay for rent, uniforms and school expenses for all their children, so decided that Teshome had to start work on the farm while his younger siblings attend the school.

“I am not in school like the others, but my fate is in my hands,” says Teshome. “I will work hard and save and hope to go back to school.”

Instead, this young man has drawn on Send a Cow’s training, and channelled his energy and intellect into his family’s farm. He has built compost-rich keyhole gardens and a new variation, called Kotoba gardens, in which he says he has managed to grow 900 plants at once. He has a field full of huge cabbages, which fetch him a good price at market.

He is also improving his livestock management. Send a Cow has not given Teshome any livestock, but has instead taught him how to care for his existing cows and sheep to improve their well being and their productivity. He is building a new livestock shelter and feeding them with better fodder. He has already noticed the difference in the quality of the lambs born.

Now Teshome has plans: to buy a donkey so he can transport more goods to market; and to invest in poultry. All the while, though, he is watching the new school being built in his area, hoping that he may at last be able to get the formal education that he craves.

If it is completed soon, he says he will go back to school, continuing his farming on the side. If not, he will use the expertise he has learned from Send a Cow to expand his farm. Either way, he knows that education is the key to a better future.