Learning by Seeing

The room was small. The house was the room. What little light that crowded in was standing room only. Illuminated inside the mud and stick house was the silhouette of a man lying on thin mattresses on the floor. His cough and voice were weak, paired with a gaze that was anything but. His face was sunken from a cocktail of poverty, AIDs and the anti-retroviral treatment that just might prolong his life. One would think that he had two dark skin marks on his nose near his eyes.
As the two dark skin marks fly away one after the other after a few minutes of relaxation, you realize that one might be wrong. One might be wrong about a lot of things.

The crowd was animated. Their were tears dewing their eyes. Their were arms flailing, as if to direct air traffic. An old man sitting to my right knew that my understanding of Amharic left something to be desired. His hands that perched on his cane, one folded neatly over the other told a part of his story. The ring on his right hand seemed to defy gravity. It was a halo around his parched strong hands. He had the same sunken look as the man in the room, but in the light I could see his eyes more clearly. His eyes were the color of Mercury and if I could gauge anything, it was that his temperature was hot. The other part of the story was told in halted fragments. So that I could understand. His first pantomimes were of sorrow. He reached one of his previously perched hands for his wallet. One word hit my ears and stuck quite well ... lij ... child. A paper was neatly folded in his wallet. I didn't need any more pantomimes or halted words. Lying on this was paper was a list. A list of 5 dates, all within the last 6 years. Lines were neatly drawn through the middle of 4 of them; a memorial to things that were but no longer are.

I was invited by most host organization to help with condom trainings in small villages in the South Wollo zone. As a corollary, my PC site-mate Nichole was monitoring and evaluating her home-based care program that a local HAPCO (HIV AIDs Prevention and Control Office) heath worker and she had put together. I can't pretend to write and describe what I saw and gained personally from this experience. The crowd that I described was upset because they didn't have enough food and because they didn't have enough money. For one woman, her husband had just died and she didn't have any way to support her many children. For another, her sons had moved and stopped supporting her.
The kindness of her neighbors is the only thing that propped up her long-lived life.

What can I do to help? When someone in Ethiopia is TRULY in need, I can't do the same thing here that I would do in the United States. I don't feel right with giving money or food to help those in need here.
I can't further the idea that foreign aid will continue to be the opiate of the masses. That's not “sustainable”. But it broke my heart listening to the hurt that was being poured out in these villages, knowing that I could help in a small way if only for a second. I can only volunteer to try and help create something that can be sustainable. I don't know what that is. I don't know if I can even truly help, but I can try.

Comments

[Dave]

Build a condom factory,bush has allocated huge money for preventing aids.

[libby!]

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo!!