Amber Henshaw

Elections

Ethiopia's election fever turned out to be quite contagious.

Just over a week ago there were huge demonstrations in the centre of Addis Ababa - one day for the Government and the next for the opposition parties. The amount of people who turned out to support the opposition was really quite phenomenal. People seemed genuinely passionate about the elections - genuinely passionate that they could bring about change.

Yesterday I got to my first polling station at about 5.30am. Queues of people were already lining up in the cold, dark morning to vote. I went home at about 10am to file my first story and was amazed to see 400 or so people outside our house queueing to get into the polling station. Normally it's quite noisy where we live..yesterday with all these people standing there it was almost silent.

Allegations about the fairness of the campaign contiuned throughout the day (as they have throughout the election process). Last night Meles Zenawi (Prime Minister) banned public demonstrations and assumed direct control of the security forces.

EU observer's say the election has been mostly free and fair but there are obviously concerns about what will happen next.

The more it rains, tiddly pom!

It's raining so hard in Addis it feels like the house is going to cave in....I hope the summer rains haven't set in a month early! I'm going back to the UK next week for some sunshine...maybe.

Somali region

We got back from Jijiga/Dire Dawa a day early which worked out perfectly because it meant we could go to the election opposition parties rally in Addis today (more about it later but just to say I was pretty stunned by the number of people crammed in Meskel Square - it made the crowd at the Bob Marley concert look small). The three-day trip was fascinating and at times very disturbing. I was very inspired by the passion and the enthusiasm of the UNICEF team. They were a pretty impressive group of individuals. During the trip we were focusing on two things - the flood and the severe malnutrition crisis. The stats that came out on Wednesday said that 136,000 children in Ethiopia are suffering from severe malnutrition. It's hard to appreciate that figure or what severe malnutrition actually is until you see it. We visited a camp in the Somali Region. A woman brought her child out of her hut and I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. The little girl was literally saggy skin and bones. She was two-years-old. I'm not exaggerating to say that she looked more like she was six-months-old. I was deeply shocked to see a human being in this condition and was quite overcome.

Humanitarian crisis

It was announced this morning that the number of people urgently needing food in Ethiopia has almost doubled to 3.8 million people. When the appeal was made in December there were only 2.1 million on the emergency list.
We're going to Dire Dowa near to Harar tomorrow. A joint trip organised by the World Food Programme, UNICEF and OCHA (the office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs) to see what is happening on a grass roots level.

More next week. We're back on Sunday night..we're also spending a couple of days going to the area hit by floods.