Raising Champion Crops

Bekoji: Ethiopa's Breadbasket of Running

May 1, 2005

Twelve-year-old Tadesse Birara wakes up at 5:30 with sleep still in his eyes to join 100 other kids for an early training session. But when he arrives at the training ground at 6:05, his coach, Sentayehu Eshetu, barks at him for being five minutes late and punishes him with an extra hour of training.

He tries to plead his way out of it by saying that he would be late for school, but the coach has none of it. Tadesse is upset, but deep down he knows that his coach means well. He recalls the coach’s preaching of the need for discipline and what it takes to make it to the top.

Tadesse’s boyish smile disappears when he looks down on the training ground and remembers that the feet of many of the town’s famous sons and daughters tread hard on these surfaces long before crossing the finish line in some of the planet’s showcase athletic events. Tadesse joins his training partners knowing that working hard here will get him to the top of his sport much later in his life.

Healthy Heartland

Tadesse comes from Bekoji, a small agrarian town 100 miles outside Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa. That’s a two-hour drive by Western standards, but the trip to Bekoji takes "ages." Rough, rugged roads do not allow for comfort unless you have the perfect off-road car and, even then, you need to cope with considerable bouncing up and down. When you read the road sign that welcomes you to this agricultural hinterland, you will notice that your mobile phone is now in a non-network area.

Technology and travel comfort aside, you will likely feel that you have been betrayed by media reports that describe Ethiopia as a dry and drought-stricken land. You will conclude that there are two Ethiopias: one that the international media is always rushing to portray as a rain-devoid, poverty-stricken nation, and the other, a living paradise that you see right in front of you.

Bekoji and the neighboring farming districts represent one of the most fertile regions in Ethiopia. Farmers here toil for three seasons a year. The main agricultural produce of the area is a grain staple known as teff; the region also produces wheat, barley, sorghum, and other cereals. There is enough land for the inhabitants to cultivate and live in care-free existence from the proceeds.

Agricultural products, however, are the least known products from this area. "Bekoji is the true production center for Ethiopian long-distance talent," says Gebretsadik Tesfaye, the head coach of the Arsi province athletics team, and Haile Gebrselassie’s first coach.