Good luck, dear Fikre!

Fate had not dealt Fikre Demeke a good hand. She was trapped in debt and her worries weighed her down. Unexpectedly, the tide turned - thanks to help from Menschen für Menschen. Fikre was happy - only to be hit by another stroke of fate: Her house burned down. Will she fall back into hopelessness, was all the help in vain?

Nine years ago, in 2016, our local agricultural and development experts came to the village of Odomike and met Fikre Demeke. The 30-year-old looks mutely at the ground, depressed.

Fikre was still a child when her parents forced her into an early marriage with a much older man. She had her first son when she was just 16. She knew nothing about family planning. Five children followed and with them the shortage became ever greater. Her husband, a day laborer and small farmer, earned next to nothing. So she named her youngest son "Kaku". Which translates to "it is enough".

A few months before Kaku was born, her husband fell six meters from a tree while harvesting avocados. "Since the fall, he has had a back problem and can hardly work," says Fikre Demeke. The family has no money for treatment. "Now the burden is all on me," says the mother. Her day of housework, gainful employment and childcare lasts 17 hours: "Sometimes I would like to stand on the street in the hope of being run over by a car, that's how desperate I get sometimes," says Fikre Demek quietly-

She is roasting and selling corn on the cob on a street corner in the dusty little town of Gangua, not far from her village. To do this, she needs charcoal, a simple grill and fresh maize. She had no money for this. So she took out a loan from a moneylender. The equivalent of 17 francs. This money is a debt trap for Fikre.

She makes a profit of around 85 centimes a day. But the moneylender demands half of her daily earnings as interest! Those who are extremely poor in Odomike in the Abaya district of southern Ethiopia have no choice but to accept such usury. "Without the loan, I wouldn't earn anything," says Fikre. "The worries weigh me down, but I have to be strong for my children." Her voice is toneless, her shoulders slumped. Kaku, her youngest, has fallen asleep on her lap. He snores softly.

The little money Fikre earns goes entirely on basic foodstuffs. She can't put anything aside to pay off her loan: The trap has no way out. There are various reasons for Fikre's extreme poverty. There is the harmful tradition of early marriage. Then there is the lack of education: Fikre has never been to school. Those who are educated can defend themselves against injustice - and know how to plan a family. Added to this is her lack of rights as an uneducated woman: Fikre cannot offer any collateral, she has no chance of getting a loan from a bank - so it is the poorest who have to accept the outrageous usury of private loan sharks.

But how long can a family endure deprivation and hunger? Many extremely poor families in Ethiopia break apart. And it is often the women who hold everything together. Like usury-victim Fikre Demeke. They are in an existence that is not a proper life - just survival.

Two and a half years later, at the beginning of 2020, Fikre Demeke is hardly recognizable. "Life is good!" she says and laughs. There is nothing left of the bundle of despair she was. Now she beams with positive energy and lists her successes. "I have eight goats. I was able to buy a small piece of land with coffee bushes and banana trees. We eat three times a day - and something different every time. And my children go to school!" Our project turned things around, says the mother. These activities and impulses were crucial:

• The self-help group: Like Fikre Demeke, most mothers are victims of tradition and circumstances. Their potential needs to be awakened. That is why Menschen für Menschen brings women together in groups where they support each other. The development experts teach them, for example, the basics of economic management, how to save money and run a small business. Along the way, the women learn perhaps the most important quality of all: self-esteem. Fikre's group has given itself the name "Charagari". This translates as: “Good luck”.
• Microloans: We provide the women's groups with start-up capital to lend to the members. Fikre Demeke took out a loan for the equivalent of 100 francs. This replaced the usurious loan. She buys coffee cherries from the farmers and sells them on to coffee traders. She also trades in mangoes and bananas. She travels 100 kilometers by bus to the town of Hagere Mariam and buys two travel bags full of T-shirts and plastic shoes, which she can sell in the village for a small surcharge.
• Family planning: Fikre learned all about contraception in the self-help group. She had a hormone stick inserted under the skin of her upper arm at the health center. It protects against pregnancy for years - and thus against even more shortages when the family's small resources are needed to support another child.

"The best thing about my new life is that I'm free," emphasizes Fikre. Because now she no longer needs usurious loans. "On the contrary: now I even lend money." To neighbors who are in need, for example due to illness. "But I don't charge interest," says Fikre. "I know what it feels like when you can't breathe."

Four years pass until the next meeting, it is now mid-2024. Fikre Demeke's expression is serious when we meet again. There is no despair in her body language, as there was at the start of our project. But the laughter is missing. What happened?

"We had a good time," says Fikre. As a small trader, she earned enough to support her disabled husband and send her children to school. But then fate struck the family: "I was away and the children didn't tend the cooking fire as they should have done." No one knows exactly how it happened. Did sparks set the grass roof alight? In any case, the house with its walls made of wooden poles burned down completely - along with all the clothes and kitchen utensils and the cash of around 100 francs hidden in the house, which for some day laborers here is half a year's earnings.

In the past, the fire would have been a devastating disaster. "Of course I was completely devastated and frustrated at first," reports Fikre Demeke. "And I saw no other way than to take the children out of school, except for one of the sons." Although there are no school fees, the state schools require parents to buy simple school uniforms. The books and pens are also expensive for six children. The school supplies were also burned.

"At least I hadn't lost everything thanks to the savings and self-help group," explains Fikre Demeke. She was able to fall back on savings and a new microloan. At the university in the nearby town of Dilla, she sells fruit and vegetables to teachers and students: "I earn a stable income every day." She was also able to build a new, simple house. The log walls are not yet plastered with a mixture of clay and straw, but the family has a place to stay again." And in September, for the new school year, all my children will go back to school."

When asked for a photo, Fikre Demeke looks directly into the camera, no longer lowering her gaze as she did when we first visited her at the start of our project. "Things have improved year on year," she says. "I don't let a setback get me down."