Nice to see that you are highlighting these issues here as you have been in other places. However I feel that your portrayal of the situation is A) one-sided and completely unfair and B) out of line with Permaculture principals.

In Permaculture we believe in turning problems into solutions. You have highlighted these problems for us. However you don’t seem to be interested in a solution. In fact it seems more like you would prefer to see our business destroyed and our objective of training and implementing Permaculture in Ethiopia fail. I think that is callous and destructive and not how Christians were supposed to behave. You also declined to accept the refund we offered you since you were so dissatisfied with our living conditions. But have chosen instead a course of trying to rubbish our name on the internet with your exaggerated and inaccurate portrayal of the situation.

To address your portrayal of the situation:

- None of our kitchen staff were ever diagnosed with typhoid. That is a flat lie. Our receptionist was sick with typhoid the week before the course. As soon as we discovered that we stopped him serving food immediately. We should note that one of the other course participants was also sick with typhoid the week before the course before he had ever been near Strawberry Fields. There is no reason why he could not have been the source of contamination as he was interacting with the other participants more than any of our staff. That also demonstrates the fact that a) typhoid is common in south Ethiopia and b) anybody coming to the area should be vaccinated and should bring antibiotics with them (ciprofloxacin) in case they pick it up. We agree with you on that perfectly. We told you and all the other participants in our information sheet before you came to Ethiopia that you should have all necessary vaccinations and bring a medical kit.

- Regarding Stephanie, the girl that was diagnosed with typhus. When i heard she was sick I immediately offered to take her to the clinic. She refused. The course of action that you suggest I should have taken – fumigating her room etc. – was not suggested as we didn’t know what she was sick with. She never suggested to us that she had been bitten by bed bugs or flees as you are inferring, so how would we conclude that her room needed to be fumigated? In fact we deliberately didn’t ask her to move out of her room when we had a large group of tourists come, because she was sick. When she didn’t recover after taking some remedies of her own we took her to the clinic and paid for her treatment. She could equally have picked up typhus by playing with the cat.

- Stephanie was not the only student who got sick to refuse medical treatment. In fact Steve, the course trainer also refused treatment, and encouraged the students to do the same. I think it’s fair that if we are responsible for the general health of the class then the students should cooperate in getting treatment with the right diagnosis and the right medicine immediately so they don’t spread their infections to the rest of the class. This didn’t happen.

- The students were also going to town to drink local brew in the meat houses where the locals eat raw-meat. We discouraged this but that was looked upon as though we were spoil-sports. These places are rife with typhoid as all the patrons are drunk, have dirty hands and eat raw meat with the same dirty hands and drink local brew from glasses which aren’t washed properly. The students seem to me more likely to have picked up typhoid here than at Strawberry Fields.

You can put all of the blame on us if you like. I am not saying we have not got to improve our sanitation, we do and we are doing, but I feel that these points balance your story.

Now to focus on solutions – solutions are what Permaculture is all about – the rest of your class made a series of constructive recommendations on how to improve hygiene, sanitation, accommodation and working conditions at SFEL, and we have been making use of the proceeds from the course to implement these changes, and are working on them right now. (Thanks for not accepting the refund as that has really helped us in this regard.) And you can follow our progress on our face book page (https://www.facebook.com/permalodge).

Our approach to the issue of development has been to build up from the bottom. We accepted to live a local standard of living so that we can improve that standard in a way that is meaningful to the local community: IE If we can do it, they can too. And that is what we are doing. Steve has really taught us a lot on how to move forwards in that regard and the other students, especially Goose and Stephanie gave us a lot of helpful advice on how to improve things both in terms of infrastructure and operationally. Accordingly we have outlined the following schedule of tasks and are working through them (you can follow our progress on the face-book page.

Room refurbishments

– Dousing the grass roofs with diesel on the interior to repel insects. The smell dissipates after a day or two but the effect lasts for months. STATUS: done

– Re-rendering walls to seal all gaps and craters that may house insects and painting inside and out with gypsum which also repels insects. STATUS: Nearly done.

– Replacing the wooden beds with mud-brick platforms filled with sand and rendered over and painted with gypsum. STATUS: Done on 2 of 11 rooms, in progress.

– We have installed a new solar system to give light in rooms 1 to 5 and are now purchasing an inverter so there will be 240V sockets in the rooms as-well. STATUS: Part complete, part planned.

New Kitchen

– Building a new range with chimney so that smoke does not affect the health of the kitchen staff STATUS: Done

– Get running water into the kitchen with a convenient hand so that staff can wash hands more conveniently. STATUS: In progress – pipes are now in place and we have attached temporary fittings. The sinks can be fitted once the walls are rendered.

– Build a facility for heating water for the kichen using exhaust heat from the range. STATUS: Planned and materials prepared, can proceed once other jobs are done.

– Fit doors and windows and render the walls of the new kichen. STATUS: In progress, nearly complete.

– Build new furniture for the kichen; work surfaces etc. STATUS: Planned and materials prepared.

Toilets and Sanitation

- We have a new compost toilet design that was suggested by Glen “Goose” McGrath who took the course and is a professional compost toilet builder. We have purchased the materials to build this design and will use the prototype for our new staff toilet at a new location more remote from the kichen, behind our tree nursery. The other guest toilets are all functioning perfectly adequately, we have dug new pits and the design works fine as long as the operational procedure is followed and they are cleaned regularly, which they are. The problem with the staff toilet comes from the difficulty the staff have in grasping the concept of how it works, which stems from poor education and a general complete lack of toilet discipline in Ethiopia generally. STATUS: Planned and materials ready.

- Stephanie and Sam, two on the course participants ran a sanitation workshop for our staff before they left. They demonstrated using vinegar as a natural disinfectant and recommended we use different colour coded buckets and cloths for washing the toilets, showers, rooms and the kitchen. We have now bought these materials the cleaners are implementing their system effectively. We have also hired a second cleaner. STATUS: Working.

Staff and Management

- We have hired a new receptionist and a new lodge manager for the high season. They are both proficient in English, well educated and have experience working in the service industry.

- We have hired a new cook, Mirco, from Italy. He has revolutionised the management of the kichen to make the cooking much less work-intensive. This has taken a lot of work-burden off Semira, my wife, so she is also happier and more effective.

- We have written a new operational code on the advice of Stephanie, and begun a program of weekly staff meetings with rewards for good performance to encourage better staff motivation and a spirit of teamwork. This is paying great dividends on staff moral.

Over all I feel, Alison, that we have taken on board your concerns, and those of the other students on the course who got sick. We are not claiming that everything was perfect. That is why we offered you a refund. You didn’t acknowledge that but preferred instead to go on a crusade to destroy our name. We however will turn this problem into a positive solution and an opportunity for progress. This is a chance the build on the course outcomes, the ideas and advice of the participants who encountered the same or worse problems than you did but had something positive to offer in response. It is clear that some people will obviously never be satisfied with the general standard of living in Ethiopia any way. We have adapted to those conditions and are now building up from that base of the local life-style. It is sometimes a shock for westerners coming into these conditions to be faced with them. That is why people coming should take all due precautions. Still I think that what we are doing is a far better way to approach development for communities than building western-style compounds with all the modern mod cons that you have been demanding while the locals around you live as a different species. And I think we deserve a chance to keep moving forwards without being slagged-off slandered like this.

What is really important to us is that our project has grown and will continue to grow by the input of the various different volunteers, guests and course participants that come to put their energy, ideas and skills into the place to build a real working example of Permaculture in the heart of food-insecure south Ethiopia. That is not just for us either but also for the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project which we have established in ten primary schools around Konso over the last 3 years. I can’t see what you hope to achieve by destroying our reputation here.

http://permaculture.org.au/2011/07/22/you-dont-ha…

Then, seven other members in our class fell sick with Typhoid. It seems that some kitchen staff had been diagnosed with Typhoid, but were still working in the kitchen and serving food. Typhoid is highly contagious, and anyone diagnosed with Typhoid should be forbidden from cooking or serving food. Likewise, the staff latrine should be quarantined, especially when it is close to the kitchen and dining area, as it is at Strawberry Fields, but this was not done.

So, if you decide to stay at Strawberry Fields, make sure you go with your eyes open – public health and sanitation are not well observed. Make sure you have your immunizations, and come with a full round of broad spectrum antibiotics to treat whatever intestinal disorder may attack you.

Otherwise, it’s a nice place with good, fresh food