Unseen disasters

Missiles and drones dropped bombs, and soldiers raided houses and assaulted men, women and children in Ethiopia’s northernmost region of Tigray between 2020 and 2022. Tigrayans searched for safety, food and medicine to keep themselves alive.

They were caught in the crossfire as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front fought against the Ethiopian National Defense Force in a struggle for political power. An estimated 600,000 people, military and civilian, were killed and the region decimated.

Within the first six months of fighting, MCC partnered with Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), a Mennonite church that has 1,462 congregations in Ethiopia including six in Tigray, to send food, blankets and hygiene supplies. It was the beginning of an ongoing response to a crisis that, during the pandemic, barely caught the attention of the Western world. 

This is just one of the ways that MCC provides urgently needed help in the face of disaster or crisis — in Syria, in Ukraine, in Gaza and also in dozens of places that don’t make the worldwide news.

In the case of Tigray, getting that assistance into the region was a steep challenge. After MCC’s first shipment, the Ethiopian military established a blockade that prevented travel to Tigray.

“We were without food, water, electricity or any banking services, which caused us immense suffering,” says Bizuayehu Abera, Tigray relief project coordinator for Meserete Kristos Church Development Commission (MKCDC), the humanitarian arm of the church, and pastor of an MKC congregation in Tigray. (Read about him here.)

“They prevented even the smallest amounts of food from entering Tigray, leading to widespread starvation,” he says. “People died from lack of food (and) medicines needed.” 

As MKCDC searched for ways to get supplies behind the blockade, the primary support the church could give was comfort, says Desalegn Abebe, president of MKC, which is based out of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. He remembers a Sunday morning when a Tigray pastor arranged for him to preach to a congregation by holding a microphone to a cell phone.

“I prayed, but I couldn’t speak because I was filled with tears,” Abebe recalls. “And I tried many times, but I couldn’t.”

He apologized to the pastor the next week for being unable to deliver the sermon, but the pastor told Abebe that his tears allowed people at church also to weep and to feel his compassion. “They assumed that people who were not living in Tigray were against them, but this time God used that very moment (to show them) that God has somebody who felt their pain outside their context,” Abebe says.

The plan called for the Tigray Bureau of Labour and Social Affairs, MKC leaders and Tigray relief committees to identify the most vulnerable recipients: people who were widowed, elderly, ill, pregnant or nursing, and those who had large families.

In July 2022, Abera boarded a UN plane with the cash. The money would primarily be distributed through individual accounts set up at Tigray banks. But in Mek’ele, the bank was closed, so he delivered the money directly to the Mek’ele relief committee. They distributed cash to recipients, who would use it over the next three to four months primarily to buy food or medicine.

Abera remembers vividly the common responses he heard from those who received the cash: “If you had not come to us that day, we would have died. We had exhausted everything we owned and were left with nothing. But because you brought the aid promptly and urgently, our lives were saved.” 

A peace agreement in November 2022 allowed money to be transferred electronically to banks in Tigray. People no longer needed to listen for the noise of military aircraft, drones or helicopters so they could crouch on the ground, hoping not to be seen; they no longer would only light fires in caves to hide the light. But the suffering throughout Tigray didn’t end.

Schoolteachers Alemtsehay Tadesse and her husband Araya Gebreselasie recalled how they had just bought a small house together when the conflict started. They immediately lost their jobs and by early 2023, remained without work as schools were still not open. The food they were able to buy in the market with their cash helped to sustain them and their 7-year-old son Solomon. 

To make matters worse, in 2023, drought devastated the region, meaning no harvest for farmers like 66-year-old Behihu Desalegn.

Droughts, which used to hit about every 10 years, now come twice as often. But in March 2024, Desalegn was ready to plant again. He came to the town of Gijet to buy fertilizer at a subsidized price and hoped to plant his own teff, wheat and barley.

The cash that he had received, he shared, was part of what had helped him and his family survive the lean times.