Majete

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Majete
Majete Location within Ethiopia
Coordinates: 10°44′N 39°50′E / 10.733, 39.833
Country	Ethiopia
Region	Amhara
Zone	Semien (North) Shewa
Population (2005)
- Total	7,487
Time zone	EAT (UTC+3)

Majete is a town in northeastern Ethiopia. Located in the Semien Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region, this town has a latitude and longitude of 10°44′N, 39°50′E.^[1]

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Karakore has an estimated total population of 10,859 of whom 5,553 were males and 5,306 were females.^[2] The 1994 census reported this town had a total population of 6,247 of whom 2,922 were males and 3,325 were females. It is one of two towns in Antsokiyana Gemza woreda.

[edit] History

UNESCO selected Majete as the location for a Community Teachers Training Center. Ethiopian trainees would complete an 18-month program, then go to the provinces to open new first grade schools together and adult classes. When the trainees and the center staff arrived on 16 March 1957, they found no building for the project existed, so for several weeks trainees and staff met in Jarra, on the main north-south highway, in a partly reconditioned Italian-constructed building, put at disposal by the Highway Authority which had not been used since the liberation. A UNESCO expert brought a machine for making stabilized soil blocks, the first to be used in Ethiopia. Using a mixture of soil and cement, these blocks created with this machine would permit buildings to be constructed buildings more quickly.^[3]

Majete was heavily damaged in a 1961 earthquake swarm, considered one of the most destructive earthquakes in 20th century Ethiopia. The epicenter was at the nearby town of Karakore in Efratana Gidim woreda. The main shock struck with a magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale, destroying the entire town and killing five people, while 45% of the houses in Karakore collapsed and 17 kilometers of the highway north of the town were damaged by landslides and fissures. (The buildings constructed with the soil-block walls of the Community Development Training Center were extensively damaged were not resistant to tremors.) About 600 people fleeing Majete camped about 35 kilometers away from the town, but they were later moved to a relief camp closer to their former homes.^[3]

Emperor Haile Selassie inspected the affected areas around 20 June and announced that 16,000 metal sheets would be made available for constructing new villages. Swedish relief workers discussed a project for reconstruction through the Ethio-Swedish Institute of Building, but it was not carried out. However, an elementary school building constructed of concrete was completed around 1970 with Swedish assistance through ESBU.^[3]

[edit] Notes