Tagel Girma has a dream. He wants to save lives.
Tagel lives in rural Ethiopia, in the fertile coffee-growing region of Yirgacheffe. Growing up in an area which has seen very little development – there are few schools near his home, and hospitals are rare – he has decided upon a career that would help to address some of the most pressing problems in his neighbourhood.
‘I have a plan to get good grades’, he states. ‘I want to help my country and my people. I want to become a doctor. There is malaria in this area. I want to help mothers and babies who are being attacked by this disease.’
Tagel is studying in grade 10, which in itself is quite an achievement. Until very recently, there was no high school near his home and for many local children, whose parents could not afford to send them off to get an education outside the district, higher education was not an option. It is only in the past two years, when two local coffee co-operatives agreed to pool together the premiums they had earned from the sale of their coffee to Trade Aid and other fair trade buyers, that grade 9 and 10 classes have been offered in this part of Ethiopia.
Tagel’s own education career has been interrupted; he’s 20 years old and is now one of the foundation pupils studying in grade 10 at the new high school. He’s grateful for the opportunity he has been offered by the Homa and Negele Gorbitu coffee co-operatives’ joint decision to build more classrooms. It will not, however, be an easy path for him to follow if he is to pursue his dream to become a doctor. The school, though its doors are open and its classes are running, is still badly under-resourced.
‘We don’t have any current plan to build classrooms beyond grade 10’, explains Jibril Muzeyne, who teaches English and ethical education. ‘We now have more classrooms but we still lack equipment. We can only teach the theoretical parts of computer studies as we don’t have any computers. We teach biology, chemistry and physics but we don’t have any equipment for our science laboratory. We don’t yet have electricity here, either’.
Time will tell if Tagel can realise his ambition, but for now his dream is alive. It’s not easy to imagine him ever getting comprehensive medical training but if he can continue to study hard using the resources available to him, if he can extend his education as opportunity allows, and if as a doctor he can access basic medical supplies, he may yet both earn the title of doctor and also help to save some of the lives that are unnecessarily lost within his community for lack of basic medical resources.
He may even be able to practice in the closest health clinic to his childhood home. That clinic, too, has been built by his local coffee co-operative with its fair trade premium funding and it is already helping to save lives.