Vulnerable Ethiopia

Tucked between our painting experience in Mukatore, and visiting the amazing canyon, was an experience I'll never forget. On the way to the canyon, Tefera took us to another orphanage. This one is big with 50+ kids, but they also have 70+ elders, and several people with mental illness. I think Tefera wanted us to get a better idea of what orphanages are usually like. We understood without any explanation as soon as we stepped onto their compound.

The people who work and volunteer here make tapestries to sell to help pay for their work. When you visit you are expected to buy something to help them. After getting a tour, you WANT to buy something to help in some small way, although I also had the overwhelming urge to run away. It was so hard to see the conditions when we had become used to Layla House. We gave the kids blow-pops here too, mostly because we had a huge Costco-size box, and nothing else really to give them. As the kids lined up to receive their sucker, and then as we showed them how to unwrap it, I had to fight back tears. This felt so different. These kids don't have the promise of adoption in their eyes. They don't get to go to a good school. I hate suckers. When I see them in a kid's mouth I can almost see the cavities forming, and feel the unnecessary sugar surging through their system. It was so hard to see these kids, some middle/high school age bow to us in gratefulness for the sucker. There was so much I would have rather handed out. At the very least clothes and medicine and food. But in my heart, I wanted to hand them the world. To hand them education, and love, and hope for tomorrow.
At Layla the kids are given so much. Through adoption they will be entitled to feel part of a family, but they also receive education and the opportunity for livable wages. They get the chance to know that they will one day be able to support a family of their own, and watch their grandchildren grow.

These kids will probably grow up here, as kids do in orphanages all around the world. They will grow physically, and then age out of their home. We can pray for their future, but there must be something more we can do. I hadn't yet met Hanna (from an earlier post), but I think she has the vision for the answers to so many of my questions on this day.

The other thing that affected me in this place is the elderly souls that sit on beds in the rooms on the right side of the compound. I dutifully went into the first room and met the eyes of the people who live sitting on their beds. The first person I saw was possibly the oldest person I have ever seen. They attempted to smile and I had an overwhelming urge to touch them, to take their hand in mine and to somehow connect our hearts without language. I didn't have time to ask someone if that was culturally respectful, because this other side of me just broke open and I had to leave the room.

What I realized that day was that the devastation of Africa's people through HIV, tuberculosis and other diseases has created so much more than a continent of orphans. So many of us feel led to do something about this orphan crisis we hear about. Kids raising themselves and dying with no one to watch over them is more than we can bear. What I missed until now is that the middle generation that has been wiped out by disease has also left an older generation alone and vulnerable. As I waved and smiled to the elders who smiled to us from their beds, it hurt me to realize that they should have been living with their children watching their grandchildren be born, then play and study, and then marry. At this moment as they sat silently in a room, they should be sitting on a chair their grandson built for them watching the great-grandchildren play. These are people who have survived for generations. They are strong enough to have lived through disease and the death of many loved ones. They shouldn't be alone now. They should hold their place in their families with love and respect.

I know that in America, and probably most of the developed world, we have issues with how our elders are treated and cared for as they age. Especially for people without money, the options are limited, and not always compassionate. I feel like long ago we lost the strength of extended family, and of teaching our children to care for and respect older generations. I think that is what affected me so intensely. In a culture that only a couple of generations ago still held those strengths, the loss is even more difficult to witness.

I don't know what to do with this experience except to talk about it. There is so much work to do, and it isn't possible for any of us to tackle it alone. We have been given different hearts and different gifts so that we can spread out and help in so many ways. I hear so many people excited about helping orphans. The promise of childhood is contagious. We sponsor them and imagine what that $30 a month will do to change their future. What can we do with those on the other end of life? The promise of a bright future on this earth has passed. Yet, they deserve love and care as they remember their past. We can debate morals and ethics from any religion's perspective. But there is something core to all of us in how we treat the oldest generation. It is the right thing to do in any culture. There have got to be an army of people who find these wise souls on their hearts. We cannot forget the generations of pride, faith, love, and promise that the orphan children have come from. The older generation's call may not be as loud and piercing as the orphan's, but it holds the memories and culture of a continent.