Planting Hope

Ethiopia. What images are conjured up in your mind by the mention of this country? For many, it brings up images of desert. Or famine. Perhaps a bony little boy with skin stretched over his protruding ribs. Many people believe Ethiopia has always been in this miserly state. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ethiopia is known throughout the continent as The Roof of Africa because so much of the country is made up of high mountain plateaus, once lushly forested. Until as recently as the last century, the abundant rainfall from Ethiopia’s high plateaus supplied much of the river water from other Horn of Africa and East African nations.