Wow! Three months have already flown by. If my whole trip goes as well as it has in Ethiopia, I will be very lucky. Thanks to Newton, Beckie, Addis, Tame, Susan, & Yacob for their friendship. It has been a lot of fun. Things I will miss about Ethiopia: the children at the Care Center, of course, getting a beer at the local street bar with friends, all the smiling faces of the children as I walk around town. Things I will carry with me: Merituh’s smiling face when he walked across the room, the warmth & friendliness of the brothers I met in Lalibela, the heartache & sadness of a new little boy who came to the Care Center, a small little girl lying along the side of the road all by herself who seemed to be homeless, and the few but very difficult to see deformities people have to live with. Things I won’t miss: all the sheep body parts lying along the side of the road (hooves, bones, heads, intestines, etc.), the pollution from all the vehicles, and the begging. I have learned to say “No” to the begging but it has become difficult to not feel jaded and still feel compassion. Everyday when I go out I am approached; sometimes they just straight up ask for money (little kids will just hold out their hand and say give me money, sometimes people act friendly and try to strike up a conversation but I know they want something from me and most the time it is money.
Saying goodbye to the children was hard enough to do once, but I ended up doing it twice. After class on Friday, I told the school-aged children that it was time for me to leave. The look on their faces broke my heart. I gave each one of them a hug and they were crying and I was crying. I think it was the hardest on Sammy (the oldest), he wouldn’t even come to me. He was just sitting on the floor crying and wouldn’t look at me. I went and gave him a hug and he just shrugged his shoulders as he was crying. When I thought I had said my goodbyes, I was then informed that they were having a farewell ceremony for me at 4:00. It was very special. All the children that I connected with were there (school-aged children & the toddlers). They sang songs for me and then some of the social workers and nannies gave small speeches for me. They all said how special I was to the children and how much of a difference they could see in them since I’ve been here. One of them said that when someone gives from the heart the way I did to the children, the only way I could be repaid would be from God. She said what I have done and the love that I had for the children could not be replaced. But thanks to my observations & suggestions they have already started to make big changes in the organization for the sake of the children.
It’s really hard to put into words how much this experience has meant to me. I have been so blessed to meet such wonderful, loving children. I pray that they will all have a loving family very soon to go home to and that they will feel how important they are. Children are magnificent and I am amazed by their resilience!
