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I finished reading this book the other day
and it took all my will to not shed a tear at the restaurant I was eating lunch
in in Thailand. I sometimes find it hard
to put into words how and why I want to move to Ethiopia when people ask me and
all I can say is that Africa changed my life and there must be a way somehow
that I can help these people achieve a better quality of life and in the
process enrich mine further. Open up the
beautiful country of Ethiopia to people who never would have imagined to travel
here – bring tourism to a country that is still, learning the tourist ropes and
spread the word it is safe to come and if I can help, in turn get others to
help, if it only changes one life then we have been successful.
Below are the last 4 pages from the book
Where There Is No Comfort, Seven Days in Ethiopia-Juliann Troi-Eloquent Books
2009 and it sums up my feelings pretty much to the letter. If you think you can help in anyway after
reading this please get in touch with me.
All it takes is one person to start the ball rolling……..
The next logical question;
How can one make a difference in a world so seemingly
upside down?
Early in the 2003 film ‘Tears of the Sun” Bruce Willis’s
character cynically states that ‘God already left Africa’. For reasons I didn’t understand as I watched
from the safety of my living room, that scene stuck in my mind. I have revisited and mulled it over from time
to time over the years since. Perhaps,
deep down all that time I wondered if it really is. Has God abandoned Africa? Left her to founder and drown in a sea of
darkness. In the opinion of a Nigerian
friend, Africa is not dark at all, but rather blessed because there is a much
greater opportunity for good here. Light
is indeed brighter and more effective at night than during the day.
This trip showed me two important things:
God has not left Africa.
He is alive and well and working diligently on behalf of His people. While in need of help, Africa is not in need of anyone’s
quick fixes. She is in need of slow,
healing tender ministrations. Perhaps it
is a continent ravaged by disease, many preventable. Or it is ripped apart by hatred, brutality
and greed but, what if, as poets and optimists believe, love truly can
effectively nurture the dying and counter hate?
What if little acts of genuine, heartfelt kindness made by people willing
to give of their resources or even leave their places of comfort and be
uncomfortable for a week or two, can right the worst wrongs.
It is true that during my seven days in Ethiopia, while I
developed a ‘new and improved’
definition of discomfort and lost many of my illusions, I found along the road
of this adventure something deep inside myself that refuses to be contained in
the limitation of human words. Is it
curiosity? A desire to know what makes this indomitable people so
indomitable. I don’t know, perhaps I
will never will. What I do know is that
they suffer unspeakably, yet their smiles are wide and genuine. They look different and speak a different
language, yet now I see that we are not so different as we might like to
imagine. We all have hopes; we all have
dreams, desired outcomes for our trips, whether it be around the world or down
the road to the market. Each life, whether
here or in Africa, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, is a rich and
varicolored tapestry, an amazing picture that cannot be reproduced by anyone
else, only experienced and remembered.
My tears are gone.
In their place is resolve, a resolve to share what I have seen and do
what I can to help. But that is for
tomorrow. I see the country folk in their
small circular huts of mud and thatched straw scattered in seemingly random
fashion throughout the hills, the city dwellers to the cramped square rooms of tin
or crumbling mud brick. But they remain
with me. I fear they always will, to
curse me with their want.
Or is it a gift they’ve given me? Had I not seen them I would never truly
appreciate how blessed I am. I can feed
my two children, my daughter is tall and beautiful and more worried about what
to wear to school than cheating the death and deprivation that relentlessly
haunts them. Again I am confronted by
the hopeless eyes of a mother who knows that for her child there is no bright
future.
I desperately fight with the anguish that suddenly
threatens to pull me under again. Though
terrible, this too is a gift I realize, for to see and feel nothing would
signal an inexcusable callousness and frightening lack of compassion, cold
indifference born of a life of self-indulgence.
I cannot help but wonder how you, the reader, will take
what I have shared. Will you become
indignant that I would appeal to you for help?
We do, after all, have so many problems of our own. I have heard so many say “why should I waste
money on a people who lack industry and breed like rabbits’. They are only
getting what they deserve. Ashamedly, I
must admit that I have even thought it a time or two myself in the past. Perhaps you have looked past the enormity of
the issue and decided it’s just too big for one person to fix. You wonder what can you possibly do to make a
difference. I know I have been caught in
that web as well.
Thanks to Pat Bradley, I went and saw for myself what one
convinced and determined person can do.
You see, Pat learned of the plight of the Ethiopians in 2003 after
reading a news story in the growing famine there. He landed in Addis Ababa a short time later
not knowing a soul, with only a phone number in his pocket. Today, through his tireless efforts to raise
support and activate others, he has adopted an Ethiopian family numbering into
the thousands and through ICA’s work is transforming the barren landscape and
giving many of Ethiopia’s children a future and hope for it.
I saw for myself there is nothing to fear, that they are
only people, a once mighty people part of Kish, Nubia and Axum. Each was a great empire that ruled much of
East Africa and even rated prominent mention in the Christian Bible. They have fallen into disgrace and despair,
becoming a nation crippled by need with hands out to receive crumbs and scraps
from the great foreign table.
I would assert that it isn’t a situation entirely of
their own making, that they are not merely ‘getting what they deserve’. Rather, they are victims of circumstances
largely beyond their control-the men can’t control the weather, that sometimes
the rains don’t come, or they come too greatly and wash away the crops or make
them rot in the ground. The children can’t
control the fact that their parents grow sick and die leaving them without
shelter or support.
Perhaps the saddest fact of all is that the Ethiopian
people have been in the grips of hopelessness for so long they have forgotten
what hope is. If they are only getting
what they deserve, then how much worse could we, who have control of our own
destiny and they, deserve for seeing their plight and doing nothing or, worse,
not caring at all.
I think of young America with our pioneering spirit and
our willingness to help a neighbor in need.
Are we not all neighbors in this ever shrinking world? The Ethiopian man being consumed by leprosy
is no less human and able to feel pain and the devastation of his disease than
you or I. Perhaps he and the rest if his
people feel pain more acutely because they are so intimately acquainted with
it. Perhaps they bear their burden so
gracefully because they have felt it for so long they have become numb to it
and simply accept us as an immutable fact of life.
Perhaps, this generation is hopeless but the next need
not be. With a little help for our sick
and dying sister, Ethiopia can become a beacon of hope, a bright light in a
very dark place. Call it terminal
optimism if you like. I prefer to think
of it as a good start on rescuing all of Africa.
It is a grand vision I have. But I realize it is not one I can accomplish
on my own. I can only put words to paper
and tell you of their suffering. It is
you, the now informed, knowledgeable reader, who must take my words and give
then substance. You must make them into
something real and give them power by joining them to your actions. Perhaps you have no such vision, are not
equipped or even desire to go, but then you don’t have to. Perhaps you have a little extra that you can
give. Therein lays the real power as it
puts resources into the hands of people, like Pat Bradley, who choose and
desire to go and meet the Ethiopian people at the place of their need-a place
where there is no comfort.
For more information on Pat Bradley and the International
Crisis Aid’s work in Ethiopia and around the world go to www.crisisaid.org
Where There Is No Comfort
Seven Days in Ethiopia
Juliann Troi-Eloquent Books 2009
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