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.