Week two:
I walk down the street and people stare… not out of disrespect, but because they aren’t use to seeing a white person. Kids will say hello or run up to me and want to touch me; like paparazzi following you everywhere, impossible to go unnoticed, to be invisible.
I haven’t been able to go anywhere by myself, because I don’t know the area or the streets well enough. Not that I have anywhere to go or anyone to meet. The few people I do know, don’t speak my language. Doesn’t exactly make a great dinner conversation.
I want to take a shower, but we don’t have any running water (it goes on and off, sometimes off for days at a time). So, hello deodorant and messy hair! Unless we take a trip to the flua (the hot springs), 2 taxi rides away, where you can pay 13 birr to take a hot shower… best 13 birr I’ve spent (except for the one time I waited for over an hour to get a shower). 13 birr is about 60 cents by the way.
I wake up in the middle of the night… when you gotta go, you gotta go. I put on my shoes, grab my flashlight, (I’m already in my hoodie which I sleep in) and I make my way outside and down the stone path to the bathroom. I try not to shine the light on the walls… I made that mistake once and saw the most unpleasant looking spider.
This is my reality.
I wake up and go outside to see my family already up making buna or doing chores. They’re wearing they same shirt they wore the day before. Boosa (the five year old) has had on the same shirt and jacket for at least 3 or 4 days. One of her flip flops is broken, the strap between her two toes has come undone, but she wears them anyway. Teressa’s bright blue school uniform aka a knitted jacket, which all the kids wear, has holes and tears in it. How do I walk back in my room and put on a new, clean shirt? New socks? How do I decide which of my 6+ pairs of shoes to wear? Which of my 3 purses I want to use? I feel ashamed. Should I be? I only have my 2 suitcases and hiking backpack, which I’m living out of, but they carry so much value. Even with so little, I feel like I have so much… so much more than they do. Do they notice? Can they tell that I’ve worn a different shirt everyday? Do they resent me? Think I’m rich? Maybe they don’t even notice, because I wake up every morning and am greeted with the warmest smiles and best intentions.
Every night mother comes in to say hello when she gets home between 730 and 830pm. The past few nights she’s brought Eyasu and I treats. One night it was leftover pieces of vanilla wafers. The other a bag of peanut M & Ms. Tonight, she came in carrying a bag and bowls and plates. She sat down and began to cut up a papaya in front of me, mixing the pieces in a lemon-sugar bath. It was delicious. She left the whole thing for the two of us. I ate only half and insisted everyone else (her husband, daughter, and 5 extended family members she’s taken in from the countryside) share the other half. With so little, why do I get the treats? Maybe she has for them too, I don’t know. These questions all swirl through my mind. A woman I can’t even speak too. Well, I speak to her in English and she talks to me in Amharic. I have no idea what she’s telling me, but I feel like she understands me. How can I even begin to repay this woman for all her kindness and hospitality? Do I get them a stove (they don’t own a stove… no cookies, no pies, no delicious-mama’s-chocolate-chip-banana-bread, no kugel, no baked potatoes or lasagna)? Or what about a drying rack or decent Bristol brush to scrub plates with so they don’t have to use the sponge that’s in pieces? Would they resent me? Is that seen as being better-than-them… able to buy better things? Maybe not. But, what happens when it breaks? When it needs repaired? So many questions.
I walk down the street and see immense poverty. People beg at almost every street corner. They come up to taxi buses and peer in hoping to get a donor before it pulls away. People with lost limbs, lost fingers; strange hard-not-to-gawk-at contortions fill the streets and beg as well. What are you suppose to do for the person who’s so contorted that they can’t walk, but crawl? Who you see sitting in the mud and filth. Do they really live that way day in and day out? Is it just for show?
I haven’t been able to clear my mind of these questions. They swarm my mind all day. Where to begin? How to help? Will this program be sustainable? Will it last once I’ve gone? Will I go? Can I go? Can I stay? Am I doing more harm than good? I want to help.
I want to help in anyway that I can. Even if I’m just remembered by Boose as the “crazy American who always spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand, who gave me crayons and colored pencils,” will that be enough? Or will I be another hope that’s come and gone. Will it be a relief not to have to smile and “wait on me” everyday?
I want so much. But it’s not about what I want. It’s about facing the reality that I now live in and figuring out how best I can be of service… that is if I am at all even needed or wanted for service.
I’ve been trying to figure that out, where to begin. Eyasu and I have had a lot of meetings the past week and a half. We’ve been meeting with amazing people from organizations doing incredible work- Mary Joy Development Association, People In Need, Yaya Girls, The Ethiopia Project, Grassroot Soccer, Habitat for Humanity Ethiopia, Our Fathers Kitchen.
I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. These people have the answers. It’s just a matter of bringing their answers to our community, to our trash dump. How can we expect a child to pay attention in school if they didn’t eat breakfast and don’t have lunch (because they’re use to rummaging through trash all day to find a meal)? The child gets a meal from an organization that feeds poor children once a day, but how can they go to school if they don’t have any money for the uniform or books? How can they pass school if they have no light to study by at night, no one to help them with their homework, and can only eat dinner if they go rummage for food? How can mothers go to a skills training program when they have no one to watch their children, when it means they won’t eat that day, because she spent her time learning instead of searching for food?
This is reality.
I try to think back to the reality that I once lived in; the reality where I had dollar grilled cheese Monday’s and happy hour at Bodega, followed by half-off sushi Tuesdays at Royal Ginger. The reality where I slept in a comfortable bed in a carpeted room where I had more clothes than I ever needed. Where I had a bathroom that was heated, clean, indoors, and included toilet paper and soap. Where I had a hot shower, a huge fridge, and numerous cabinets filled with snacks and food. A home with wifi, where there was more than one TV, so that I could watch my favorite shows; a home with multiple rooms, multiple stories, air conditioning and heat.
The things I took for granted. How can I go back knowing what I know now, after seeing what I’ve seen, what I’ve lived in? How is life so drastically different for human beings born into the same world? Why is it so unfair?
Why?
Who knows?
But it’s reality.
