Pastor at his local congregation. Evangelist to his neighborhood. Community board member. But first, Abebe Woldegiorgis was a witch doctor.
Woldegiorgis hails from the rural outskirts of Bishoftu, a city one hour southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, and grew up in his country’s historic Christian denomination, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Though many residents followed this tradition, superstition and ritual still dictated aspects of their day-to-day lives. Woldegiorgis once helped enforce these practices, asking that people who brought goats or sheep to slaughter during the community’s annual festival receive blessings.
Woldegiorgis quit school after fifth grade and supported himself and later his wife and three children by helping with occult sacrifices, following directions of a man he calls “the prophet,” a witch doctor.
“I used to hate evangelical Christians,” said Woldegiorgis. “I tried to kill them.”
Woldegiorgis felt this rage personally at the wedding of the prophet’s son when he gifted the groom inexpensive perfume and the prophet lashed out at him. Wounded, Woldegiorgis got drunk. “You are the Devil,” he told the witch doctor. “I’m going to the Protestants.”
Woldegiorgis’s decision lost him his livelihood and the church community he had known since a priest baptized him as a baby. But it also gave him an overwhelming sense of peace, and he no longer fought his anxiety with alcohol and drugs. He persisted in his new faith, despite the dearth of evangelicals in the area and the requests of Orthodox priests that he not evangelize door-to-door in their communities.
This faith also connected him with Three Roots International (TRI), a ministry that helps locals to organize for community development. Woldegiorgis served on an association for parents and teachers and one for leaders from several villages known as the Community Development Committee (CDC).
Like his fellow leaders and neighbors, Woldegiorgis lives in a compound with multiple shelters. Residents construct homes and barns with tin roofs and wooden frames, filling the gaps with mud. Dozens of bunched-up, thorny acacia branches serve as fences.
Many villagers have painted the inside and outside of their homes. One leader’s living room features kelly-green walls, with gold tinsel snaking around picture frames. But nearly everyone lives without basic infrastructure, including electricity, plumbing, and reliable roads.
Woldegiorgis wants the government to address those needs. He sees this advocacy as tied to his faith, and quotes Nehemiah 2:17: “Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”
Bishoftu has been free of the violence that has devastated parts of the country in recent years, but the area struggles with persistent poverty. Last year, the government took a loan from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank but also devalued its currency, causing the birr to overnight lose 30 percent of its value compared to the US dollar.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has continued with his ambitious plans to elevate Ethiopia’s image, starting with the country’s capital. Wide sidewalks and protected bike lanes have replaced hundreds of homes and businesses. Tall, elegant streetlights line the road from the city’s airport. White Christmas lights gleam as they spiral around palm trees.
New regulations require buildings along main roads in Addis Ababa to turn on lights at night. The second phase of the corridor project, launched earlier this year, will add dozens of playgrounds, recreational spaces, parking garages, and electric vehicle charging stations.
The government has given Bishoftu similar treatment. In March, it announced plans to construct a new nearby airport. During a recent week, day laborers worked in trenches and operated heavy machinery for several miles along the city’s main roads, adding supports underneath them before pouring concrete.
The area’s crater lakes have made Debre Zeyit (as Bishoftu is also known) a regional tourist attraction, generating numerous roadside stands selling neon-colored swimsuits and plastic floaties.
But few villagers work in the local tourist economy. Instead, those who farm or raise cattle struggle. Inherited land subdivides over generations, leaving families with plots too small to sustain themselves. Those who don’t inherit land hope they can find work in Bishoftu as laborers.
The village isn’t far from the city—for those with options other than walking. Those who can afford Bajajs (what Ethiopians call tuk-tuks) hail them when they see them. But drivers usually can’t find enough customers to justify loitering in rural areas. During the rainy season, which starts in July, the flooded dirt roads are passable only in horse carts.
Woldegiorgis and other community leaders are nervous about the government’s larger aspirations. But they’ve seen the railroad and highway that cross through their region and do want authorities to pay more attention to rural infrastructure.
“People are being displaced,” said Woldegiorgis. “The project’s good impact is negated because people have lost homes.”
One of those will soon be Worku Aboye, 57, an Orthodox Christian who chairs the CDC. Aboye’s house sits where local leaders have committed to install an asphalt road. “These changes are bad for me but good for the next generation,” he said.
The government has sent him a letter saying it will compensate him with other land. Aboye prefers cash. He finished 11th grade before he began raising oxen and eventually made enough money to open a bank account, funds he used to rent a home in Bishoftu.
At age 25 he married his wife, Emebet, only 12, who gave birth to their first child at age 13. Emebet was still attending school and did not intend to marry young, but her brother didn’t believe she would ever marry if she didn’t marry Aboye, whose father was an Orthodox priest. Some said the family would be cursed if the wedding didn’t go through.
Though the couple has stayed married, Aboye said, “I would never advise anyone to do that.” The couple has six children. Their five oldest have left the farm life they grew up in for plumbing, fashion design, and engineering.
Three years ago, someone stole 45 radios from his youngest daughter’s school. Teachers had used the devices to continue classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Angry about the crime, Aboye decided to join the CDC and now chairs the group of six men and six women (eight Orthodox and four evangelicals) who meet once a month to discuss challenges in their community.
The community nominates members to the CDC, but a government office must approve them. The CDC has no legislative authority but has effectively lobbied the local government to establish a main road in one village and install a bridge.
After trying for two years, Woldegiorgis helped villagers in another community with no well access convince the government to let them use a nearby tankard. The change is transformative: Some residents now have a water spigot on their own property.
Woldegiorgis, Aboye, and others now hope the government will improve a road linking the TRI school and the village. The rainy season batters the road, carving riverbeds in the dirt. When it erodes, it threatens the school’s perimeter and makes it nearly impossible to truck furniture, curriculum, or other provisions to the campus. School officials had to move the school’s gate after intense rain.
One recent Sunday night before the rainy season, a leader received word that the government would bring steel rollers at 6 a.m. Monday to smooth dirt and sand over the road. But the project abruptly came to a halt that morning when the government and a local union could not agree over who was covering the cost of the materials.
Aboye received a call later that week: Government leaders had miscommunicated about the compensation for the materials. Still, no one has come to finish the project more than a month later.
Seeing residents engaged in their community has heartened a 20-year bureaucrat who works closely with the CDC as a supervisor in Bishoftu’s bureau of education. (CT gave the official anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about his work.) One recent afternoon, he dropped by a local clinic, where the CDC tries to encourage more residents to use its labor-and-delivery and medical-testing services.
In a room with numerous charts hanging on the wall tracking vaccinations paid for by UNICEF or USAID, he reminisced about meeting with the CDC leaders last year to encourage their advocacy. He praised them for their vigilance in looking after their villages and school and having a “sense of ownership.”
The official is excited. He said expectations have gone up: “People everywhere are asking for their rights.” They want to know “how the government is using its resources” to provide electricity, roads, and infrastructure. He hopes people will see his efforts to support their work as an outgrowth of his belief: “The most important way to preach the gospel is through my work. … I want people to find faith in Christ through this.”
