Planting Shade Trees

Children of Ethiopia

What would you do if the closest clinic is a 6 hour walk? I took this picture the day we did a mobile health clinic in Tufa. The village of Tufa is located 200km South of Addis Ababa, on the shores of Lake Langano in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. The area has traditionally suffered from famine but a recent project run by our sponsoring organization has been improving irrigation in the area. The goal of this project is to improve food security in these this chronically famine-affected community, by building two 40 hectare irrigation schemes to sustain crops through drought. These will directly benefit 8,500 people.

 

This picture proves that friendship can be made with candy. Keep enough bubble gum on you and you'll always have friends. Ganet was walking around barefoot everywhere, including on our construction site. She is the daughter of one the school teachers we worked with. Her brother is Tamaskin.

Tamaskin is from the Oromo tribe in southern Ethiopia,the national language in Ethiopia is Amharic and he has many friends that are foreigners. Both he and his brother speak three languages. In a country where formal education stops two grades lower than the rest of the world the intellectual potential of their children say a completely different story.

Tamaskin's father works at Langano Elementary school. When it started the school originally covered only Grades 1 to 4. It has been well received in the community which places a high emphasis on education. In the last three years the school has expanded to include grades 5 and 6, special camps have been offered for girls and a newly constrcuted library space that I helped to work on last year.

Mingi Children

For generations southern tribes in Ethiopia have believed in what they called "mingi children," infants that have been cursed. It could be for something as simple as their top teeth came in before their bottom teeth.

This is an excerpt from an article I read recently. There has been little modern research on mingi. Elders single out for death children who are born out of wedlock, have damaged genitals, or whose top baby teeth emerge before the bottom ones. Elders believe keeping this traditional practice is crucial to tribal survival. Allowing a mingi child to live among their people, they fear, will cause the rains to cease and the sun to grow hotter. In the three tribes, which practice “mingi”, there are a total of roughly 130,000 people living in hundreds of villages spanning an area totaling hundreds of square miles. It is estimated that more than 1000 children are killed each year because they were “mingi”.

For whatever the reason the children are cursed and are usually thrown into a river and left to die. There are now several groups working to convince tribal leaders to give these children up for adoption.  

What can you do to help? Awareness is the first step. Search for articles or news reports about the problem of "Mingi Children" and share what is going on Southern Ethiopia.  Second find a group that is caring for "Mingi Children" and support them. One organization I've found is Bring in Love, they pair up widows that they've trained with vocational skills and Mingi Children who need adopted parents.

13 Months of Sunshine

When I landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last year I thought the same thing most people think when they think of Ethiopia, famine or a hot dry land in conflict. To my surprise Ethiopia had many regions that were green and apart from the border with Enritrea the country is quite peaceful. The mornings were actually a bit too chilly for me. Here are a couple of other interesting facts about Ethiopia that may also surprise you.

1. Thirteen Months of Sunshine - This is the long-standing motto of the Ethiopian tourism committee. Most people think that this is cute hyperbole. It's not. Ethiopians use an Ethiopian Orthodox Church calendar that includes tweleve 30-day months followed by a 5 or 6 day holiday month. Even during the rainy season, it's always sunny.
2. Starbucks beaten by Goats - Coffee was discovered in the southwest region of Ethiopia called 'Kaffa' when a shepherd saw his goats getting a strange buzz from the berries they were nibling on. 
3. Alexander the Scaredy Cat - Ethiopia, in the past, for many years was headed only by female rulers. A legend has it that even Alexander the Great stopped at the borders of Ethiopia because he did not want to risk being defeated by a woman.

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The Hippo in the Room

If you wake up really early, say about 5:30am, and head out to "the beach" at Lake Langano you'll see one the most amazing/scariest thing you'll ever see up close, Hippos. The crazy part is that there is no fence between you and this behemoth. You just have to hope that if they charge, you can run faster than whoever else is with you (just kidding). The hippo, found today throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is considered by many experts, explorers and Africans to be the most dangerous animal in Africa (not counting the mosquito). The hippo has killed many more people than Africa's lions have.

When we talk about orphans in Africa there is a hippo in the room...and that hippo is... AIDS. Worldwide, there are an estimated 16 million AIDS Orphans. Of that number, 11.6 million live in sub-saharan Africa (that’s over 77%).

The House of Hope in Langano Ethiopia is interfacing with the Orphan problem in sub-saharam Africa. This is a place where Ethiopian babies who have lost their mothers are taken care of. This is the way it works: The baby’s father goes to the House of Hope along with a female relative who will be willing to raise the baby after he/she (<--baby) leaves House of Hope. The House of Hope will care for the babies until they are around 7-8 months old when they can survive solid food, they return them to their families.

And then there is HOPE.

That's almost twice the population of Jamaica, my home country. According to UNICEF these orphans will eventually learn to live on the streets. They won't have access to basic rights such as proper care, education, psychological support and supervision. Often, orphans and other vulnerable children are forced to work to earn an income. They are exposed to various forms of exploitation, including sexual exploitation.

Last year I went to Langano, an area in Southern Ethiopia with a medical and construction crew and was introduced to the House of Hope Orphanage. They are working to help stop this cycle at infancy. They provide food and health care for babies after their mothers have passed away. The compound itself includes a school, farm, campsite for young children and a medical clinic. Of these projects one of the biggest needs is the House of Hope Orphanage. 

One of their greatest needs today is funds to purchase baby formula whose price has skyrocketed over the last year. An average baby needs around 3-4 tins of formula a week. This adds up in a hurry. To supply a baby with formula for a week they need $40 dollars. For a month they need $160 per baby.

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