Indigenous Peoples Development Program

August 24, 2009

For Salt Investments, I am editing and working on documents for OPIC, the US governmental agency that may be guaranteeing funding for Salt Investment’s construction. We must fill develop an Indigenous Peoples Development Program (IPDP). They are very interested in how the project affects the indigenous peoples of tjos area. OPIC's representative mostly wanted to photograph and talk with nomads – those individuals who collect salt from Lac Assal in an artisanal way. But, here nomads are part of the overall community people, the Afar tribal people which are by tradition nomadic. These salt extractors have just developed another business line, collecting salt and taking in on camelback to Ethiopia and other regions of Djibouti. The OPIC representative could not get it into his head that they were all one in the same peoples. And the time and effort involved in developing this program has been enormous. It makes the US government seem so out of touch.

The pictures above are of the nomadic men on their way to Tadjoura(only males extract/transport/sell salt from Lac Assal). They dig it up by hand with pickaxes, load it into sleeves holding 25-30 kilos of salt and walk 2 days to Ethiopia and other regions of Djibouti in a caravan with one or two other men and their camels. In Ethiopia, they exchange the salt for maize or sell and use the money to buy family necessities.