Mike's Note: FYI Here's the text of an email I sent out to our "Ethiopian donors" a couple of days ago...
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Friends, I've been home over a week now, so it's this little report is
past due! My apologies for the delay... I'll blame it on the jet lag
and the culture grief as usual.
This trip was very different than my spring journey to Rwanda and Burundi. This time I was traveling with my good friend Tom Davis, who runs a US-based organization called Children's Hopechest.
This was all about orphanages. We ran around visiting as many
orphanages as we could, looking for ones that would fit in with
Hopechest's excellent model of connecting orphanages with churches or
businesses. (Hopechest is very active in Russia and Swaziland, but
Ethiopia is a brand new country for them, along with Uganda.) Tom's
friends Jamie and Sam were also along. They maintain an online
community called The Red Letters Campaign, named after one of Tom's books. They posted a lot of material from Ethiopia, and I'll refer to their work a lot here.
We ended up collecting $2080 online. With some offline donations and some personal money I took $2300 to give away.
Our
first "deposit" was made into an orphanage near Ambo, which was about
2.5 hours from Addis. There we met Suleiman Bayu. Suleiman runs another
orphanage in Addis, and uses his salary from that job to maintain the
Ambo orphanage "on the side". Sam has written up our Ambo experience here, but I'll tell you, this guy Suleiman is incredible. We left $1000 with him.
Next I had the incredible privilege of a return trip to Mother
Theresa's Sisters of Charity Orphanage at Ascu, on the outskirts of
Addis. I first visited this place, which constitutes holy ground in my
opinion, last March. This time I warned my colleagues about Sister
Maria, who runs a very tight ship, and she did not disappoint! 450
children, all of them HIV positive. Just a couple of years ago the
mortality rate was 25%. Now all the children are on anti retro viral
drugs, and the death rate is down to 5-6%. Basically the only children
they lose now are the ones who arrive too late. Sam and I arrived on
our own, and after passing inspection by Sister Maria, we were handed
off to Christine from Nebraska who showed us around. Christine is in
charge of the medications, and I had met her the year before. At that
time she had told me the story of staff from Johns Hopkins coming to
the orphanage to investigate their incredible results. Once the Sister
realized they were not there to help but simply to gather research, she
threw them out! We left $300 there and got out while we could.
Later that same day we left another $300
with the folks from the Kebebtsehay Children's Home. This place has
great needs, but is run by an incredible woman named Sophia. Our
Ethiopian contacts told us that in their view Sophia was the most
trustworthy orphanage director in the city, and that was good enough
for us. A highlight for me was time in the baby room.
Our next gift was made at another return engagement for me - Hannah's Homes. You can read Sam's write-up here,
but I'll tell you that Hannah's was probably the highlight of the trip
for me. I recognized many children there, many looking older and more
mature, but unmistakable. These kids are healthy, and are obviously
loved. And I'm in love with Hannah's model of placing these kids in
homes as opposed to the more popular institutional setting. This visit
wasn't all smiles though, as I also received some sad news, which you
can read about here. We left Hannah $500.
I actually missed out on our final day of visits as I was "under the weather" at this point. I gave Tom our final $200
to give away, and he left it with the good people of Ebeneazor's
Children's Home. This home was founded by an Ethiopian now living in
Denver, and I know Tom was impressed, despite the 3 hour drive!
The thing that never ceases to amaze me when I travel to Africa is
the incredible people I get to meet. There are so many unknown heroes
there, both local and from all over the world. And unless you bumped
into them you would never know they are there. These are the people we
get to help! Once again friends, thank you for your generosity, your
trust, and for the great privilege of being your eyes, ears, and
chequebook in Ethiopia! With your gifts we managed to impact the lives
of many hundreds of children in a real and tangible way. "Thank you"
hardly seems sufficient, but they are the only words I have.
Peace,
Mike
PS. You can check out some of my photos from the trip on my Flickr site.
There you'll also see photos from our very quick trip up to Lalibela.
This is the home of 7 churches dating back to the 10th century, carved
out of solid rock. This is a pilgrimage site for the Ethiopian
Orthodox, and we flew up there to get some video footage for future
Hopechest material. That was an experience I'll never forget.
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