Visit of Leul Ras Mengesha Seyoum to the Ministry of Water & Energy, 6 March 2023.

Leul Ras Mengesha Seyoum is 96 now and in remarkable good form. He was Minister of Public Works & Communications up to 1960 when he became Governor
of Tigrai. During his time as Minister, he supervised the Blue Nile basin surveys made by the US Coast Guard and Geodetic Survey; the US Bureau of Reclamation
Blue & Corps of Engineers on Nile Basin surveys that led, inter alia, to the locating of, and preliminary studies for, the Border dam (now called GERD); and
negotiated the loan to buy the first jets for Ethiopian. In 1973, at the end of the devastating Sahelian drought, and at the behest of Haile Selassie, he went to ODA in
London and asked the British Government to fund a water & rural development study in Tigrai. That happened early in 1974: a phone call from ODA to my boss
Vernon Robertson at Hunting Technical Services in Borehamwood led to mobilisation of a large TA team in a few weeks. I was on that project during Phase II for
all of 1975, and while I did not meet him then - he had wisely fled the country when the Derg requested him during 1974 to come to Addis for a meeting to answer
some questions - it is because of that work then, and therefore his initiative, that I am here and still working on repeat photography and landscape change. Lang may
his lum reek!

The present Minister of Water & Energy is HE Dr Eng. Habtamu Itefa Geleta who was, he advised us, born in 1977. Ras Mengesha had come to the Ministry again
to meet Dr Habtamu and be filmed for his memories of water resources during his tenure in the 1950s and later. The media team did not arrive, but we had a nice
time with the Minister, made an interview in the library, examined the new information / display centre (at present empty), and will try again on Monday at this
home. See more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengesha_Seyoum.

From Left: Ato Tsegaye Debebe (MoWE), HE Eng. Habtamu Itefa Geleta, Leul Ras Mengesha Seyoum, and a member of Ras Mengesha’s household. He is
holding his autobiography published some years ago: an English version is being prepared. He presented the Minister with a copy of the two-volume “Dancalia,
L’esplorazione dell’Afar, un’avventura Italiana” (2009, Istituto Geografico Militare, Florence).
In the MoWE Display room. I gave him a copy of the book on landscapes / landforms of Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia in which I have a chapter on Somalia.

Inspecting the soon-to-open water resources display centre at the Ministry of Water & Energy.