Lost in Translation

By Sarah Mraz, International Program Director

I feel lost in translation, but this is the mud, wood and stone version, not the chrome, glass and neon version of the movie. In addition to my inability to understand much of the language(s), there is much implied but not spoken in this beautiful culture. So I smile, bow my head in greeting "Selam", while shaking hands (more like a gentle holding). Then I patiently wait for someone who is more enlightened than I to tell me what we are doing next or where we are going.

The most wonderful part about being in Ethiopia during the rainy season is that it is really GREEN everywhere. Even in Tigray, the northernmost region that is prone to drought and famine is green this time of year. If the rains continue until mid-September it should be a good harvest year in most of the country. We recently visited three towns in two days in Tigray, the poorest region in the poorest country on our planet.

The Ongoing Needs of the Community
We visited our sponsorship communities in both towns of Axum and Adua. Each group of children and their relatives were waiting for us with flowers and greeted us with special welcome calls that sound a bit like the whooping call of Native Americans. We also visited a hospital in each of the towns that serve our sponsorship community and made a donation to each one. Journalists followed us for the entire day and we heard later that the donations made by Wide Horizons were covered on local and regional radio as well as on national television. Conditions at both the Adua Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital in Axum are nothing short of what any American would consider deplorable. Both were built over 60 years ago and the building are overcrowded and in condemnable disrepair. St. Mary's must be demolished but the government has not yet approved the funds for a new one. Storage outbuildings are being used as recovery wards. The pediatric wards are constantly full and there is no space to separate those with contagious illnesses (AIDS, TB, and meningitis) from those suffering from malnutrition, infections and dehydration. The lucky ones in the pediatric wards have a parent or relative sitting by their side to care for them as best as possible. The hospitalized orphaned children have no one, and languish in their beds, empty IV fluid bags/tubes still stuck into their scrawny arms. At St. Mary's there are 7 doctors and 20 nurses that serve an annual patient load of over 55,000 per year. They say they are lucky because they have a nurses' training program there.

The beds have no sheets and only unclean woolen blankets. All laundry is done by hand and spread outside on the grass to dry in the few sunny hours between deluges of rain that quickly turn all walking paths in the hospital compounds to mud. There is a huge commercial washing machine standing idol and broken in the laundry room of Adua Hospital. The donors never provided information on the manufacturer and there is no one who knows what parts are broken or how to order new ones. The Adua hospital will use our donation primarily for laboratory equipment and re-agents for testing and diagnosis of pediatric illnesses. They are desperate for doctors, especially orthopedists and ophthalmologists. One hospital occasionally receives help from a visiting team of physicians from a French organization called "Medecins Du Monde", but they don't come often enough. Unfortunately our donation will not be enough to buy a desperately needed oxygen machine for the pediatric ward. The hospitals are able to provide rehydration fluids and antibiotics to the sick children in their care. St. Mary's Hospital will use our donation to purchase sterilizers for the delivery/operating room and medicines to prevent mother-to child HIV transmission. The only surgeries they are able to perform are emergency c-sections, emergency appendix removals and more minor procedures such as draining of infections. All other more serious matters must be referred to hospitals in the capital, Addis Ababa. The director of the Tigray region told me that last year 190 children were referred to Addis Ababa for orthopedic surgery. Only 9 of those children were actually able to afford the journey to the capital to get treatment. It is an expensive two-hour plane ride or a 4-day journey over the mountains by bus.

The Children Left Behind
We also visited a boarding school/orphanage for blind children ages 5-17 and a shelter for street children in Mekele, the largest city in the Tigray region, which is the region also most heavily impacted by Ethiopia's war with Eritrea that just ended 2 years ago. The boarding school has 62 blind children, and most had gone to their villages to visit their families during this last month of school vacation. Those left behind to greet us were about 20 orphaned blind children who have no relatives to go home to. One cannot fully comprehend what it means to be a blind child, an orphan, and also born into the poorest region on the planet. Many of the children are still excelling against all odds. One teenage girl read us English words from her Braille primer: "spite", "courageous", "determine". Another boy told us he passed his 10th grade exams with a 4.0! These crucial exams are the determining mark of who is eligible to attend college or university and who is not. I want to come back to raise/allocate a donation for them of a cow ($800) and some new sheets and blankets (about $10 per set). Some missionary friends of Almaz's have already raised enough for another cow, have helped them plant spinach so they can eat fresh vegetables twice a week, and have remodeled their toilets so they are now "blind friendly" and the kids don't miss their target and step in their own waste anymore like they used to.

At the shelter for street children (all boys), another child told us he also passed his 10th grade exams with straight A's. He is first in his class at the local public high school. His dream is to become a biologist. His father died and his mother sent him out into the streets to fend for himself as she had too many other children to feed and he, at age 12 was the eldest. Another child read us a welcome poem he had written for us in his native Tigrena language. I never got a complete translation into English, but it made Almaz cry as she read it to us so it therefore made me cry too. Something about promising to do well and achieve a better life even though he has no parents.

Sponsorship Children Who Need Your Help
The children in all three of our sponsorship regions are clearly doing very well. They have new clothes and are going to school, even the little ones. I make a short speech of inspiration and tell them all that their sponsor families in America think of them every day and wish them well and send many greetings. Their grandmothers and aunties hug us, kiss us four times, two on each side of our cheeks, and bless us over and over for helping them. I was able to meet the child James and I sponsor, Tirunesh, who is 13, is the youngest in her family and lives in a child-headed household with her 18 year old sister. Two other sisters are grown and live in other villages. She had received every letter and the package I had sent her. She is entering 8th grade in September and was 5th in her class of 45 children at a local Catholic school! She is shy but spoke English to me. Her favorite color is yellow. She tears up when she recalls her mother's death and other family history. She is very thin and almost as tall as I am and taller than her older sister, but looks very healthy. She and her sister have identical faces and shy smiles. Officials in all of our sponsorship regions beg us to send more sponsors ($360 per year).

The Changing Ethiopia
There is also a lot of progress in Ethiopia notably evident since I was here two years ago. Many local NGO's are cropping up and most communities are finally at a place where they can begin to help each other rather than expending all efforts on subsisting and dependence on outside aid. One program counsels street children in Mekele and is providing awareness training to their families, community members and even to the police who treat street children as adult criminals. The program educates the police to separate the children from the adults in jail and to provide them with physical and educational activities. Commercial farming has begun in the last two years and while the government still owns all of the land, farmers are now allowed to lease it and are eligible for 70% loans if they can come up with the first 30%. With drip irrigation technology they are discovering that their exported flowers, green beans and other vegetables are winning top awards for excellence in France and Germany.

Visiting a Hopeful Horizon House
And then there is Horizon House (our transition home for the children being adopted)! Seven delightful nannies, a laundress, a guard, two drivers, a pediatrician and Dr. Tsegaye and his wonderful wife, Yelfalem, have made a true oasis for our soon to be adopted children. Every family is overwhelmed by the affection and excellent care their children receive. They have a farewell ceremony for each child who leaves, tearfully letting each family know that they hope their child will one day return to visit them in Ethiopia. One six year old child tells her brother that she is going to America to be a business manager. She wants her brother to be the president of the company and she will be his vice president. Then they will make a lot of money, she says, and can bring it back to the other poor children in Ethiopia. Her 11 year old brother replies that no, he is not going to run any business in America. As soon as he grows up, he says he is coming back to open an orphanage in Ethiopia, because there are so many children like them that need a good place to live. After their parents died this 11 year old was sent by neighbors to be a shepherd boy in the country side, where he herded sheep and goats for days on end, sleeping outside and hungry all the time, until the American family who adopted his little sister found out about him and are now adopting him too.

Coming to America
I visited the grandmother yesterday of the child I am escorting home. As soon as she saw me in the doorway to her yard she ran to me crying and hugging me over and over, then looking up to the sky with her arms raised, praising God that her granddaughter was going to a good family. She says she had a dream two nights before where her granddaughter appeared to her naked and was sailing through the sky. She woke up distressed not knowing what the dream meant, but her friends assured her the dream was a good one. The following day she heard that we were coming to visit her and her granddaughter was finally going to America. My camera battery had just enough juice left to take her photo with her three grown sons and three other grandchildren whom she is parenting.

...We saw a beautiful rainbow over the open savannah on the long drive back to Addis Ababa. Tsegaye points out that it contains the colors of the Ethiopian flag: yellow for the sun, red for the blood of the people, and green for the good earth.

Selam,
Sarah

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