{"id":1691,"date":"2014-03-01T22:43:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T06:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imagine1day.org\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2014-03-01T22:43:36","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T06:43:36","slug":"development-looks-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imagine1day.org\/development-looks-like\/","title":{"rendered":"This is What Development Looks Like"},"content":{"rendered":"
Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Drunk in Love is playing on the radio when I head out of Addis Ababa and into the field with our team for the first time. I consider it a good omen.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 10 am on a Thursday and it takes us at least an hour to weave through the city\u2019s traffic before the smog and dust and jagged concrete skyline give way to a flat expanse of yellow grasslands pocked with tufts of trees and shrubs. A belt of green grass snakes along roadside ditches, coaxing emaciated horses, wobbly oxen and disheartened donkeys.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re heading to the Bale Zone, in the region of Oromia, where imagine1day is working with 103 communities to enroll 21,945 out of school children by December 2016.<\/p>\n
This is a daunting task.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m about to discover, when there are classrooms, they tend to be of the packed dirt and straw variety with no windows and thus little light. Sometimes, they consist of log structures with no shade. In some cases, there is no water, and half the time there are no bathrooms\u2014or pit latrines as they are called here\u2014which are basically holes in the ground surrounded by four walls.<\/p>\n