Home Visits...

(I actually didn't take my camera into the slum area, as we were visiting homes of people that I didn't know. Wherever you go in places like this, there are always crowds of people following and I didn't want to be insensitive to the fact that I was entering their homes. I wish I could be invisible sometimes and not have to school my face to be neutral in front of people watching my every expression. Consequently, there are no pictures ...sorry! I know it's way more interesting to see pictures than to "listen" to me...but there you go!)

I mentioned that I would tell you about the home of the kids in the project.
We left the school and were almost immediately in the slums. When I say slums, I mean bits of iron or cardboard or whatever other material, all thrown together in a seemingly solid mass, with winding alleyways inbetween. The alleys or "streets" were just rough stones and dirt and as Freihwot led us in, she told us to watch our step.
Mmmmm, let me see now, would that be because it was rainy season and the ground was a slippery mess or would that be to avoid the piles and oozings of human waste??

We went into a little shack, probably half the size of the office that I am writing in right now. It was very dim and damp. Here we met a lady that rented a rag on the floor to sleep on. She had three children, two year old twins and a five year old daughter. The daughter was at the school we had just left but the twins were there and I felt my stomach do a flip when I saw them.
I knew they were going to die soon, they were about the size of healthy 6-8 month olds here.
They had that pitiful, mewing sound of hunger and misery. The floor of the shack was squelchy and the smell....
I asked where they cooked and the woman led me outside and just pointed at the ground to a blackened pile of wood. Again, there were piles of human waste everywhere with the obligatory clouds of flies.
Freihwot told me there were three families in this place, a total of ten people. She had not just invaded this woman's privacy to "show" us the home, she had had a message from the woman that day to come and see her. This lady had taken her twins to the clinic and been handed some medicine but didn't know what it was for, she needed someone to read the bottle of pills to her and explain how to give them to the babies. It turned out that it was medication for epilepsy...she said she didn't know what that was.
I smiled as she bowed and shook my hand and thanked us for visiting...these people were truly gracious and beautiful. My fake expression stayed plastered on my face as every couple of minutes or so, another woman would come and beg to be part of the program. Inside I was crying.
Freihwot said that there just aren't the resources or the staff to take in more families.
Why don't you look up Hope International and see how you can help out?

I feel so sad when I remember that place, it is full of people hurting, hungry, sick and desperate. I think of my life and I feel ashamed. Not because I have "stuff" particularly, but because I often seem to want something else. Something that will ease my already comfortable existence. Something that will make me feel even better about myself or my family or...you get the picture.

I don't want to paint this picture of Ethiopia being all complete misery and sadness, I am just going through some of my experiences while there and the impressions that the country and people left on me. I LOVED Ethiopia.
I was telling a friend recently that Africa has a way of charming you and getting into your blood, so that you feel a deep connection. It also has a way of being so disturbing and heartbreaking that you think you will not ever be the same, not ever... and maybe that's a good thing.