Endangered

This painting is based on a photo I took of a child in one of the tribal villages in southern Ethiopia near the Lower Omo river.  These villages are completely dependent on the river for food and livelihood - selling the fish they catch.   As one man put it - "fish are our cattle." The Ethiopian government has built and is continuing to build massive hydroelectric dams along the river and selling the land to international companies for huge commercial plantations.    Hundreds of kilometres of irrigation canals are diverting the water from the river to the plantations. This is catastrophic for the 200,000 members of the 8 tribes living along the Lower Omo.  As one woman of the Kwegu (already starving in 2015) put it "Won't we die...where are we going to go? We will all be finished." (from The OMO VALLEY TRIBES - survivalinternational.org)