Fowler woman's trip to Ethiopia sparks desire to make a difference

This mother, standing by the wall of her home in Ethiopia, is participating in a U.S. Agency for International Development program to grow new, nutritious crops and teach others how to use them and cook with them. / Photo courtesy of Diana Prichard

When Diana Prichard was invited to go on a trip to Ethiopia, she had no passport, no international travel experience and no idea of what to pack.

But the 27-year-old wife and mother from Fowler had a calling: hog farming.

“I love it,” she said. “I love working with the animals. I love working with the people. There is a lot of pride in producing food.”

And she had a sometimes funny, sometimes serious, often thought-provoking blog: Righteous Bacon.

She also had a boatload of curiosity and a conservative viewpoint to balance some of the liberal voices she’d be traveling with on the trip sponsored by ONE, a nonpartisan campaign to fight extreme poverty and preventable global diseases.

So Prichard put a rush order in for a passport, packed a carry-on and a backpack, and headed out for a nine-day visit as part of a delegation of 12 women to one of the world’s most-heavily populated and poorest nations.

She expected to be bowled over by dire economic straits in Ethiopia, where the per capita income is $1,100 per person (the U.S. rate is $48,442).


“We all think of Ethiopia as the 1984 famine,” she said. “Children with distended bellies and dust.”

What she found was something quite different.

“It’s green and lush, and people are working really hard to become independent,” she said. “I really just left more hopeful than anything.”

ONE paid for the women’s trip to raise their own awareness of development efforts going on in Ethiopia, particularly efforts that empower Ethiopia’s poorest families to earn money.

Since their return, the women have been using their blogs to highlight those efforts.

The efforts include such things as introducing new crops to boost nutrition in a country where 28 percent of kids under 5 are malnourished, supporting textile factories that lift workers from poverty or even give them a chance to leave the sex trade and medical efforts that help women recover from difficult and disfiguring childbirths.

ONE doesn’t ask its 3 million members to donate money, although some do.

According to the organization, its main goal is advocacy: Putting pressure on governments to direct money into programs that work.

Prichard grew up in Hubbardston, nowhere near a farm, and graduated in 2003 from Carson City High School.

She has been married to her husband, Ben, for eight years and they are raising two daughters, ages 11 and 7.

It was the girls who sparked the Prichards’ interest in farming.

“We started raising some chickens for our own kids, and we just sort of fell in love with it,” she said.

On their 15 acres near Fowler, which they call Olive Hill Farms, the Prichards now raise heritage breeds such as Tamworth — red-coated pigs that likely are descended from wild boars — and black-and-white Gloucestershire Old Spot. The animals are not in traditional feedlots; they live in deep-bedded outdoor pens or in pasture space and are not routinely given antibiotics. They’ll raise 150 to 200 hogs in the coming year, selling them by the whole or half.

“We don’t have the overhead of keeping them in barns in winter,” she said. “When it’s colder, we have to feed them more, but they don’t seem to mind the cold.”

They’re not making a living from it, yet.

“It’s more like all the money is going into farming,” she said. “I kind of write to support my farming habit.”

She first started blogging in 2004, describing her writing as “kind of a public journal.” Over time, she has been able to build a community of readers and other writers.

Besides sharing her thoughts on her Righteous Bacon blog (recent entries include meditations on her time in Ethiopia, the continuing tale of training her young dog to herd pigs, the U.S. fiscal cliff, and her husband’s effort to repair their washing machine), she also contributes to iVillage and BlogHer’s food and politics sites, among others.

She would prefer not to choose a political party to identify with, but when pressed admits that Libertarian is probably the closest fit. Her conservative viewpoint is one of the reasons the ONE campaign recruited her for the Ethiopia trip.

Another: Her willingness to listen and learn on the trip and to share her thoughts.

Her first reaction to being recruited for the trip was disbelief.

“It never was on my list of things to do,” she said. “Then, I was very excited.”

Becoming aware

The ONE delegation, traveling from Oct. 5-14, included a dozen women living and writing in the United States, England and France.

Besides Prichard, they included fashion model Maya Haile Samuelsson; cookbook author Alice Currah and Cathleen Falsani, Web editor for the social justice-focused Sojourners magazine. The trip’s goal: spread awareness of extreme poverty and preventable diseases, promoting education, engagement and activism.

While in Ethiopia, the delegation, based in the capital city of Addis Ababa, visited hospitals and schools and learned about farming and food. Some of what they learned was difficult to hear, Prichard said, especially in regard to women.

“The women’s rights issues were very shocking to me,” she said.

Prichard said she was particularly moved by women at a hospital they visited that treats fistulas, permanent tears that can occur during childbirth which can cause a woman to lose bowel and bladder control. Repairing a fistula often costs only a few hundred dollars, but that’s more than many of these women make in a year. Without treatment, they’re often ostracized in their communities.

“It was heartbreaking to see women so emotionally broken they wanted to kill themselves,” she said.

Helping women

The delegation also visited two textile factories. The Muya factory, founded by fashion model Liya Kebede, markets scarves through J Crew stores. The other, FashionABLE, is staffed by women who were unwillingly sent or recruited into the sex trade and offers them jobs with decent wages as a way to leave it.

Publicity from the ONE trip has helped the factories sell more scarves, and one has hired additional workers because of it.

They visited agriculture programs where the U.S. Agency for International Development is working to introduce crops such as carrots, Swiss chard and other nutrient-filled vegetables that will grow well in Ethiopia’s climate.

They visited a school where students were eager to learn, but 67 kids shared one teacher and the newest technology books in their library dated to 1992.

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