I read this book last year and
stumbled across the entry I had written.
After living in Kenya now for 6 months and having travelled the
continent, I think the powerful words could be applicable to a lot of the
African countries and not just Ethiopia.
I remember after reading the book it took all my will to not shed a tear
at the restaurant I was eating lunch at in Thailand. I sometimes find it
hard to put into words how and why I want to move to Africa 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. If I can open up the beautiful continent
of Africa and Kenya to people who never would have imagined to travel here – to
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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