“When the Earth Whispers with Women’s Voices”

Part 1

In the latest recommendations of the Conference of the Parties on climate change, COP29 in Azerbaijan, the same terms were repeatedly mentioned: reducing emissions, clean energy, and climate resilience for the most vulnerable countries.

But what these recommendations did not say… is that there are those who live these decisions before they are written, and who pay their cost before they are even discussed.

In places far from the great conference halls, climate is not measured by targets or agreements, but by survival itself.

There, climate change is not a political file… but a daily experience that touches the most painful and honest details of life.

And at the heart of this imbalance, women stand.

Not as statistics in reports, but as the first line of response: facing changing land, water scarcity, and collapsing resources, while being simply expected to continue.

And here my journey began in understanding the real gap… between what is announced in the world’s conferences, and what is actually lived in real life.

The question is no longer: what did the Conference of the Parties decide?

But rather: who will live with the consequences of these decisions… and who will bear their cost in silence

Ethiopia… The Rebellion of Rain

I did not know that a single phone call could change my relationship with the earth and climate this deeply.

“Congratulations… you have been selected as part of a multinational press delegation to travel to Ethiopia to cover stories on climate change.”

In that moment, I did not realize that I was not traveling to write a story… but entering the heart of a world where the earth speaks through rain, and where women pay the first price.

We traveled for about two and a half hours from Khartoum airport at night, and the airplane lights cut through the darkness quietly while I kept thinking about the call that suddenly placed me at the center of this journey.

I did not know much about Ethiopia except that it is an ancient, historic country, resembling the African legends told about mountains, incense, coffee, and old kingdoms.

But what I saw there was far greater than any image I had ever imagined.

When we arrived in Addis Ababa, everything looked different from the road.

The arrival was not calm… but it carried an indescribable warmth.

A high-altitude city embraced by mountains and mist, and streets full of life even in the early morning hours.

Vendors carried hot Ethiopian bread, and the smell of roasted coffee drifted from small cafés in every corner, as if coffee here is not just a drink… but part of people’s soul.

Addis Ababa felt like a city living between two worlds: a modernity trying to expand, and ancient traditions refusing to leave.

Men and women in clean white clothes, flowing cotton garments moving with the cold air, and women carefully wrapping their curly hair, wearing simple golden jewelry that gave them a quiet royal presence.

The Ethiopian people were astonishing in their kindness. Everything was offered with a smile: coffee, directions, greetings, even patience.

The welcome was bigger than protocol… it felt like an embrace.

Ethiopian coffee filled the air everywhere, and Mohamed Wardi’s voice played in the background like an invisible bridge between us and the place.

Even the small details stayed in my memory: fasting Ramadan in this warm and unfamiliar country, working with a multinational journalism team until after midnight, and our Scottish-British trainer pushing us to write more than we slept.

In the hotel, the night was not for sleeping… but for writing.

The team waited for us patiently in the lobby, as if they were part of our journey, not just staff.

Fresh orange juice with no sugar… I could not accept it at first.

And the “asida” that did not hold its shape as we know it, we laughed about it, then ate it because time was never on our side.

Everything felt warm… familiar in a strange way.

But behind this beauty, there was a silent battle the country was fighting with climate.

Rain in Ethiopia no longer resembled the old seasons farmers once knew. It had become more violent, more unpredictable. It falls heavily for long periods, giving the land no chance to breathe, then disappears in ways that confuse agriculture and life together.

In some regions, roads were completely flooded, mud houses cracked or collapsed, and women walked through mud for hours to reach fields or markets.

We left Addis Ababa quickly, staying only briefly.

We traveled another three hours toward a distant rural region. With every kilometer, the rain intensified.

Until we arrived… and everything changed.

The rain was no longer falling… it was continuous, without pause. Day and night, as if it had forgotten the meaning of stopping.

I wore my raincoat all the time, removing it only inside the hotel, as if escaping briefly from a world submerged in water.

Then the question became reality: How do people live here? How do they work?

In the fields… the answer appeared.

Women worked under the endless rain. They wore raincoats, but mud was stronger than protection. The earth swallowed their feet up to their ankles, step after step, as if they were pulling life out of the mud itself.

But they did not stop. Work continued… despite everything.

I approached one of them as she lifted her clothes and looked at the sky, saying quietly: “The rain no longer knows when to stop…”

But the disaster was not only in the rain… it was in what it left behind.

In the vast fields, crops that people waited for months began to rot before harvest. Maize and grains, once the lifeline of rural families, turned into waterlogged plants, leaning into the mud as if they had finally surrendered.

One woman said while passing her hand over a ruined crop: “We plant in fear… because we do not know if the land will feed us or swallow our effort.”

Continuous rain gave the soil no time to breathe, roots rotted, pests and plant diseases spread, and the season that should have been a season of abundance became a season of loss.

Even livestock did not survive.

Thin cattle stood under the rain for hours, shivering from cold and moisture, and some collapsed in the mud and never rose again.