Every Tuesday, the team at Anglican Overseas Aid gathers for a devotional session. Recently, we were honoured to host Valerie Browning, who was visiting from Ethiopia's remote regions.

Our staff were captivated as she shared insights from her 30-year tenure with our partner, the AFAR Pastoralist Development Association (APDA).

‘Where I live, there are no roads. We walk to vaccinate; we walk to help with maternal health. We are treating people house to house. We have a mobile education system. If the community moves, the blackboard is on the camel and off it goes.’  

Known as Maalika by the AFAR people, Valerie has become an integral part of this nomadic tribe over the past three decades. Her journey began at the age of 22 when the harsh reality of Ethiopia's famine contrasted starkly with the abundance of her native Sydney.

‘I couldn't believe that people were going to die for lack of food – having come from Sydney, where there was chocolate, ice cream, whatever you wanted, on every corner.’ 

In 1989 Valerie, a trained nurse and midwife, married Ismael Ali Gardo, an AFAR community member. Together they founded APDA in 1994, an organisation committed to securing basic human rights for the AFAR people – health, education, clean water, and market income.  

The AFAR are no strangers to adversity. They inhabit one of Earth's hottest regions, a land marred by conflict, including the recent two year civil war in Tigray that encroached upon their territory, resulting in countless deaths and displacements. Beyond war, they face constant health threats, such as the resurgence of cholera and the devastating impacts of climate change on their livestock and livelihoods.

Yet Valerie speaks of resilience and solutions. Addressing food scarcity exacerbated by drought, she reports, ‘We recently taught AFAR women to cook spinach and feed it to their children. They said, “No, no, no, that’s a leaf, we don’t eat that.” But when they ate it, they understood this would be very good for children. We’re working on that because we now have a very serious malnutrition situation.’ 

Drought is not the only reason food is so scarce. During the two-year conflict, the market and the merchants the AFAR relied so heavily upon for fruit, vegetables and dry commodities disappeared; in an instant they had to completely change their way of living. ‘To do this, we started a base of co-operatives,’ Valerie explains. ‘We now have 32 co-operatives linked to us who are working on food security in their own communities. Where there’s enough water, we’ve started growing things like onions, tomatoes, bananas, paw paw, mango, and other vegetables like spinach... they’ve never grown (this food) in history... (they) have never seen onions growing.’ 

Not only is this assisting with food security, but it is contributing to their local economy; with no local economy, Valerie believes the AFAR will disappear. She shares an inspiring tale of a woman who emerged as a vital contributor to the AFAR economy despite losing her husband to the ravages of war. 

After her husband left for the war, she picked up the children and ran for safety. Valerie found her in a camp, ‘she came almost dead… two of her children went into malnutrition.’ She realised the woman had no cooking equipment, so Valerie sourced food like dates that she didn’t have to cook. Valerie explains that not long after, the woman said, ‘I have to do something’, so she set up a tea shop.

‘She is one of the remarkable women changing the market from being dominated by people coming from other regions to being controlled by AFAR women… I’ve been to her tea shop, she’s very funny. It’s wonderful to see her as she is now, compared to the misery and huge problems she’s been through.’
With six children, she is both mother and father, and Valerie is relieved to say that it looks like she’ll manage.

Such stories exemplify the essence of the AFAR people and APDA. In the face of despair, they discover paths to hope. It's our privilege to support Valerie and APDA, standing with a community that battles daily for its future.