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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
milk and milk products. And the farmers sell the cattle out in order to manage any of their
personal and family financial needs.
However, there is a common cattle disease, trypanosomiasis, locally called Gendi or Sut-
ie, spread throughout the neighborhoods and beyond. For decades, this disease has
prevailed in these neighborhoods. There have been intervention attempts by the govern-
ment in form of prevention. The disease is transmitted especially by tsetse flies, scientifi-
cally termed as glosina
,
which are spread all over the grazing sites at the desert. Then the
cattle get frail losing their appetite, and physically unable to travel long distance in search
of grass and water. Subsequently, the majority dies without any medication attempts.
There are few kebeles where the livestock become a big capital as every farm an-
imal healthily produces sequence of multiple substitutes. But here in our villages,
once you buy a cow you regularly buy and inject medicine. This is also attributed to
shortage of water. The people spend lot of money hoping that the cow will recover
to productivity (HOARCM14, 23/04/11).
There is a disease we call Gendi. It has no permanent medication. When our cows
get injected several times, they get adapted to the medicine to death (HOARCM16,
23/04/11).
There are human and animal water-related diseases. And, especially the cattle are
highly affected. There is one case that a total of eight cows died in one household
mainly because of water shortage (HOARCM31, 23/04/11).
There were government attempts to control the disease, as when several traps were
stretched across the desert. However, this has not continued long. There are no animal
health centers throughout the target areas. The people are obliged to drive their unhealthy
cattle long distance to Woyra, where they can find that single animal health center and
only one individual as an expert. At the center, the cattle get common tablets and usu-
ally ordered to come on weekly basis for injection. The people are not motivated by the
recurrent act of driving the cattle for this distance. So even once they start, they fail to
continue to the end. And there is also problem in the experts’ side in identifying the exact
type and harshness of the disease; they simply prescribe common tablets and injections.
Trypanosomiasis is widespread across the neighborhoods. At least three cows die
at each household. Of course, that is both by the disease and water scarcity. The
cattle have no water; previously there was a local river, Anzeche. But currently even
it has dried out (HOARCM17, 23/04/11).
Our cows must make six to seven hours round trip to reach any accessible water.
And then they get infected by ‘Arekit’ (a disease commonly caused an insect that
cows sip together with water); especially when the water is not a moving one, even
when in times rivers fail to move due to absence of rain (FGD, 23/04/11).
