YETMEN Community Situation 2010 LONG TERM PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT IMPACTS IN RURAL ETHIOPIA: STAGE 1 COMMUNITY SITUATION 2010 YETMEN, AMHARA REGION STAGE 1 FINAL REPORT EVIDENCE BASE 1 – VOLUME 6 Philippa Bevan Researched by Damtew Yirgu and Kiros Berhanu August 2010 YETMEN Community Situation 2010 This report is one of six Community Situation 2010 reports representing a part of the Evidence Base used in the Final Report for the Stage One of the ‘Long Term Perspectives on Development Impacts in Rural Ethiopia’ research project (WIDE3). It describes the situation of the community of Girar in Gurage (SNNP) in 2010 using a number of different perspectives. The fieldwork which produced the database from which the report was written was undertaken in January/April 2010. The Research Officers were guided by Protocols which are described in the Methodology Annex of the Stage One Final Report. (Our methodology ensures that all statements in the Report are connected to interviews in the database so that in case of queries we can go back to the sources of the statements. These sources are a multitude of interviews with wereda officials, kebele officials, other community leaders and notables, rich-to-poor farmers and their wives, young-to-old dependent adults, and young people between the ages of 11 and 19. (Random initials have been used to refer to information related to individual respondents wherever the case occurs). The Community Situation reports are also informed by earlier research in the sites in 1995 when village studies were produced (WIDE I), and during the Wellbeing in Developing Studies research in 2003 (WIDE 2) and in- depth research in 2005 (DEEP) for some of them. Comparisons of the trajectories of change are addressed in separate parts of the Stage One Final Report documentation. Further information on this and other sites in this research can be found on www.ethiopiawide.net COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE IN 2010 ................................................................................................................ 1 Community parts .................................................................................................................................................... 1 Community in context ............................................................................................................................................ 2 KEY SUB-SYSTEMS: HOUSEHOLDS IN 2010 ....................................................................................................... 3 Household structures ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Examples of households ......................................................................................................................................... 4 A rich household ................................................................................................................................................ 4 An average wealth household ............................................................................................................................ 6 A ‘poor’ household ............................................................................................................................................. 8 Another poor household .................................................................................................................................... 9 A female-headed household ............................................................................................................................ 10 Another female-headed household ................................................................................................................. 10 Dependent adults ................................................................................................................................................. 10 A young woman (25) who divorced as a result of poverty .............................................................................. 10 A woman (35) with illegitimate children .......................................................................................................... 11 A poor woman (30) who never married and has an ‘illness on her head’ ....................................................... 12 A long-divorced and very poor woman (55) who lives with her son ............................................................... 12 A poor blind woman (66) who lives with her grandson ................................................................................... 13 A divorced woman (78) who lives with her mentally ill daughter ................................................................... 13 A divorced young man (24) who lives with his mother and siblings ................................................................ 14 Another divorced young man (24) who lives with his mother and siblings ..................................................... 15 A religious divorced man (40) who lives with his mother and siblings ............................................................ 16 A divorced ex-priest (42) who lives with his father and siblings ...................................................................... 17 STRUCTURES OF INEQUALITY IN 2010 ........................................................................................................... 19 Genderage ............................................................................................................................................................ 19 Growing up male in Yetmen ............................................................................................................................. 19 Growing up female in Yetmen ......................................................................................................................... 20 Being a man in Yetmen .................................................................................................................................... 21 Being a woman in Yetmen ............................................................................................................................... 21 Policies and programmes for the youth ........................................................................................................... 23 Elderly people .................................................................................................................................................. 24 Inter-generational relations ............................................................................................................................. 25 Wealth and poverty .............................................................................................................................................. 25 1 YETMEN Community Situation 2010 Household poverty incidence .......................................................................................................................... 25 Inequality within households ........................................................................................................................... 25 Problems poor people face .............................................................................................................................. 26 Pro-poor interventions ..................................................................................................................................... 26 Ethnicity and religion ............................................................................................................................................ 26 Occupational castes .............................................................................................................................................. 26 FIELDS OF ACTION /DOMAINS OF POWER IN 2010 ........................................................................................... 26 Livelihoods ............................................................................................................................................................ 26 Human re/production ........................................................................................................................................... 34 Social re/production ............................................................................................................................................. 41 Community management ..................................................................................................................................... 44 Ideas ..................................................................................................................................................................... 53 SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN 2010 .................................................................................................................... 55 External relations .................................................................................................................................................. 55 Intra-community relations .................................................................................................................................... 56 KEY SOCIAL ACTORS .................................................................................................................................... 56 Map 1: Yetmen – rural and urban 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